Disappearing Helix After Reboot

[Traci Collins <tcollins rof net>]

Hi! I am experiencing a very strange symptom on my Mandrake 7.2/Helix
Gnome system. I am starting from a fresh install of Mandrake 7.2 and
adding Helix Gnome. Everything appears to work perfectly and I am a
happy camper until I reboot my computer. Obviously, <GRIN>, I don't
need to do that very often. But when I do, I lose gnome. The Helix
graphical login program is still there but when I choose the user I
want to be it tells me that gnome is no longer available on my system
and asks me if I would like to make kde the result. This has happened
four times with four completely fresh installs so it is infuriatingly
consistent.

Gnome is still on my system because I can get into gnome using the
.xinitrc and startx method but I have to tell the Helix graphical
login program that is is available again. I have another message
asking for a pointer to the documentation on how to edit the
available environments for that program (and if you know - drop me a
note), but I am extremely concerned about what might be causing the
problem in the first place. I don't like just treating the symptoms
when something keeps hosing that file. This happens during perfectly
normal shutdowns when everything shutdown and closed out without
errors. That troubles me. I don't know enough about the affected
files and the types of things that could effect them to even make
useful hypotheses for troubleshooting. During the four fresh installs
I played with different combinations of installing Mandrake with and
without gnome before installing Helix gnome but that didn't make any
difference. Does anyone have a clue about what is going on? I
obviously don't have one <SMILE>. Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks.

Traci

-- 
Traci Collins, MA, CCAI, CCNA
Professor of Computer Education
Colorado Mountain College
http://www.rof.net/wp/tcollins/traci.html