Help! My Debian blew up!

["T.M. Hospedales" <tmh31@hermes.cam.ac.uk>]

        All of a sudden while trying to emacs -nw options to setup my new
modem , things refuse to execute! It just stalls and doesn't do anything!
I see no particular connection between things that work and those that
dont: Working: xterm, ls, cat, fsck, vi Not: startx,emacs, xemacs,
netscape, syslogd (Renders system unbootable but for single mode)...

Please tell me I dont have to d/l a new debian install over a < 1.0 kps
ppp link?! :(.

I am using potato + kernel 2.2.12 last upgraded about a week ago and
running fine until just now.

Thanks,
tim