Dear friends: On a lark, when suddenly the letter "i" stopped working on my keyboard, I decided to replace my keyboard with another one, and -- you guessed it! -- my old keyboard was on its dying leg and that was the cause of the weird, endless {{18~^ scribbled across and down my screen during bootup. When this happened not only on my old installation with Xfree86 4.0 but on my brand, new installation with the more reliable Xfree86 3.3.6, I knew there was something fishy about the whole thing. Just tried the new keyboard. The boot-up went smoothly and proprerly without a hitch. My thanks to everyone who wrote it to try to help. Just a simple, old keyboard problem. Who would have guessed? Thanks again to everyone. Benjamin -- Benjamin and Anna Sher [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sher's Russian Web http://www.websher.net