Login failure after restart. Every time.

[Kevin O'Gorman]

I'm running 10.04 LTS on a Gateway laptop, and a new problem started
showing up a month or so ago.  I just got un-busy enough to ask about
it.

Every time I log in after a reboot, the gnome login fails the first
time.  It gets as far as playing the login sound, displays what could
be a window of log messages for a fraction of a second, and goes back
to asking for a login.  The second attempt was always working until
this morning, when I had to try three times.  I hope it doesn't keep
going up.

Any idea how to figure this out?

-- 
Kevin O'Gorman, PhD