Hardy refused to boot after I added some RAM and a second HDD so I decided to install 8.10. I installed '/' to a 10GB partition (formatted) and '/home' to my old partition without formatting. I deleted most of the config files on ~/.* except for .mozilla .thunderbird and .gnome* and some others. The GDM login screen appears normal but after logging in it shows the mouse pointer on the fleshy-tan colored background.
I tried ctrl+alt+f1 and ran update/upgrade and restarted, same problem still. When apt-get was running I saw some lines fly by that said something like "unable to load gnome-theme-manager ????????????????????????????????-?????????????????????????????" including the question marks. It was only visible for a second or two.
I suspect that my old theme stuff is interfering with gnome loading something that works but I'm not sure how best to clear the old junk and leave/rebuild the new.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions.