How to recover X display?

[Josef Lowder]

Thanks very much Lisa.  Following is what I've discovered so far:

On 3/22/09, Lisa Kachold <lisakachold at obnosis.com> wrote:
> Quick Resurrection -- [drop info from these steps w reply to organize the issue]
>
> 1) Verify bootloader GRUB -- What does your grub.conf look like?
> Compare old and new, specifically looking at kernel boot options.
> What are you booting into?

There is no grub.conf. In /boot/grub found menu.lst dated Apr 6, 2007
(last date chgd)
It boots to /boot/vmlinuz VGA=788 (this is the one that locks up)
Also to /boot/vmlinuz without VGA-788 and this works, opens to # command line
Also to /boot vmlinuz "failsafe"
Also to win.xp which still works
All three /voot/vmlinuz boot to kernel.h-2.6.18.6 dated Feb 23, 2007

> 2) Verify X -- Boot to rescue mode and see what your /etc/X11/xorg.conf says.
> There would have been an old xorg.conf that was copied to backup.

xorg.conf and xorg.conf.old are both dated Apr 6, 2007
(Apparently no change from when everything was working.)
diff showed "old" had "DPMS" "false" and current "DPMS" (no false)
'diff' also showed the following line identical in both old and new:
#DontZoom # disable <CTRL><ALT><KP_+><KP_-> (resolution switching)

> Look at /var/log/Xorg.0.log for clues.

Scrolling through the entire log file showed only two items flagged (EE):
module ABI major version (1) doesn't match server's version (2)
failed to load module "v41" (module requirement mismatch,0)

> Run Xconfigurator after copying current xorg.conf to KNOWNBACKUP.

Found no 'Xconfigurtor' nor 'xconfig' on the system.

> Or just copy the current file to backup and move the old over.

The current and 'old' are the same except as noted above.

> You might want to add vboxdrv to the list of modules in /etc/modules to be
> loaded automatically at startup in.

I did this and rebooted, but still get the message:
"cannot connect to X server"

> Virtualbox
> apt-get install virtualbox-ose

I don't have 'apt-get' so don't know where to go from here. :(

> virtualbox-ose-modules-2.6.24-1-amd64 virtualbox-ose-source
> apt-get install module-assistant
> module-assistant prepare virtualbox-ose
> module-assistant auto-install virtualbox-ose
> modprove vboxdrv
> adduser myusername vboxusers

We did add my user name to vbox users yesterday.
The system was working (after installing virtualbox)
until we rebooted, then the current problem began.
I can still boot the system into the non-fb (sp?) second
grub boot option and can switch among the terminals,
except F7 has a blank screen with solid cursor upper left.