[Nottingham] My Suse 10.2 is broke

[Rennacker Ed]

Hello,
Well, I have run all the tests and my system is running fine, so...
It must be Suse related and I have no idea what to do.
(except to head over to the suse forums and search)
I'll be back. :)
The problem/symptom has reduced itself to this:
Boot process finishes and the nice Suse splash/login screen appears.
User enters login name, then password screen appears.
User enters password and the screen goes blank; with the mouse cursor 
available.
HDD light flashes at variable rates for about two minutes.
Suse splash/login screen (re)appears. (rinse, repeat).
Choosing 'failsafe' session or shutdown produces similar results with 
failsafe displaying the 'empty terminal' window for the two minutes 
before returning to login and shutdown delaying for the two minutes 
before running the shutdown scripts and shutting down.
thanks for listening,
Edward