I posted the video of the whole bootup on the following link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVSMM-132R0

1. At 1:29 I get the following error:

COULDN'T RECOGNIZE THE IMAGE FILE FORMAT FOR THE FILE '/USR/SHARE/GDM/THEMES/TREEFLOWER/BACKGROUND.PNG

which is immediately followed by:
THERE WAS AN ERROR LOADING THE THEME AND THE DEFAULT THEME COULD NOT BE LOADED. ATEMPTING TO START THE STANDARD GREETER.

2. At 1:43 a login windows appear where you choose the user and the type of logon (terminal, KDE, GNOME) Default is GNOME

3. At 2:13 GNOME Loads with no background, question marks for icons in the upper taskbar, and improper icons on the desktop.

4. At 2:30 I Log out of GNOME

5. At 2:34 when the white X appears, the system freezes until I move the mouse (I don't know what caused that either)

6. At 2:44 The errors from step 1 reappear

7. At 2:50 This time I choose KDE as GUI and everything works like it used to in GNOME

8. At 3:38 I logout again, the system freezes until I move the mouse, then I get the same errors from step 1

That's all. I apologize for the crappy video and no talking.

This is how the desktop shouldn't look like:

mfillpot wrote:

Sorry for the delay, it took a while to download the 64-bit iso for installation, I am installing it now.

No problem, it's you who are doing me a favor.

I don't know how comfortable you are with Linux based systems, but have you looked at the log files to see if anything was noted about this problem?

I must admit that I didn't check the logs but I will know where to look for them. Otherwise I belong to group of Linux users who can comfortably live with Linux instead of Windows, however I don't know the shell commands off hand :)

mfillpot wrote:

To start off, I haven't seen an OS start as slow as centos since win 95.

I am glad you like it already ;) If you are wondering - the machine is a new dual core duron around 2GHZ, with 1GB of RAM with 2 WD320 HDisks in software raid. Not ideal but it's doing the trick.

I will try to look in the logs (any logs that I should pay a special attention to) and try what you suggested in terminal and will get back to you after 4pm. My Timezone is GMT+1. Thanks for the info