(in response to earlier email about chsh which i seem to have deleted) try booting from your rescue disk (you do have a rescue disk don't you?) if you have a Debian CD, boot from it, mount the root partition and whatever partition you might have /etc in and hit alt-f2. hit enter to open a shell, go to /target/etc and edit the passwd file so that the last field for root is /bin/sh or whatever you want your login shell to be good luck from da Bobstopper