[Herefordshire] Mandrake misbehaving

[Noel McG.]

 I am using Mandrake 10.1.  It has been behaving well up to now.

However, when I try to boot up, instead of going through to the main GUI I
get a command line prompt asking me to log in as localhost.
Can someone please tell me how to get back to booting straight to the main
GUI.

1.I can log in to a localhost $ prompt.

2.I have not added or removed any programmes.

3.Whilst going through the boot up I keep getting the 'system appears to
have been shut down uncleanly' and asked to do the integrity check, which I
do.
This then results in this  'File system marked as not cleanly mounted.'

4.When at the localhost or root prompt I try startx I get a long page ending
in
XIO    fatal IO error  104 (connection reset by peer) on X server ":0.0"

5. I have tried the 'rescue' mode and 'upgrade' from the CD.  I did not go
for a complete re-install as I seem to remember that will repartition and
wipe everything out, which is what I am trying to avoid.

Any ideas please.  Thanks.

Noel.