Just to let you know. New kernel may require more than one attempt. UPDATE

[mellon]

I found myself with KDE crashing after a kernel change and some updates and had to do a fresh install.  I used the KDE 2012.2 iso for a livecd. I have two 2TB hard disks and here is what I did (as far as I remember)

Disk 0 has many partitions and the first partition held my old install and was a boot partition with grub on it.
Disk 1 has also many partitions and I decided to put the new install on the first partition. The install went smoothly. I decided to keep the same home partition. I was a bit surprised I had to create a new user id but I did. I copied /etc/fstab and changed the / entry.  I then decided that I would resize the first partition on the first disk to a 140mb or so and make it a dedicated boot partition. I lost of course my old install. I did some further partitioning and it took some reading but I got all partitions back in disk order.  Once grub was on the boot partition I upgraded the kernel in the fresh install to the 3.2.18-pclos1-pae.bfs version. Updated the links and menu.lst file and rebooted with verbose on

The first thing I noticed is that the display switched to a much finer resolution and I got a lot of lines (DRM and TTM) on Nouveau. I also noticed that after building the nvidia modules etc. and before init5 the system waited for a minute.  Once I got into KDE I installed a few packages including virtualbox and did a reboot and again a delay of 1 minute appeared before init5.  
I decided to go to PCC to set up the video card. That did not work. The GT520 worked fine with the 6100 driver setting and the nvidia-current module on the old kernel. I did no longer. When I tested the configuration a message indicated that the module is not loaded and a reboot threw me back at a login and after I logged in and use startx I get a lot of text, but the most important line is. FATAL: Error inserting nvidia_current  (/lib/modules/3.2.18-pclos1.pae.bfs/kernel/drivers/char/drm/nvidia-current.ko.g): no such device.

I had to rename xorg.conf  to get startx to work again with - seems to be - a vesa driver.  With that setup I have problems running Googlearth. It won't run. Removing the nvidia-current module did not help.  For some reason the vboxmodule started to fail loading. I also noticed that Pulseaudio did not install at all; at least it was not working as before.

I installed the old 2.6.38.8-pclos3.pae.bfs kernel and added a line to menu.lst. I rebooted and went in with the old kernel. Video setup worked fine and Googleearth was running. Did not yet test Pulseaudio.

Back to 3.2. I installed all other versions and added them to menu.lst
3.2.18-pclos1
3.2.18-pclos1.bfs
3.2.18-pclos1.pae
During boot I saw no change of font size or display or stuff on Nouveau.  There were no delays and I could do a normal boot as if it was the old kernel. Nvidia settings were kept.  3.2.18-pclos1.pae.bfs kernel version still causing issues.

So finally I removed the 3.2.18-pclos1.pae.bfs kernel. Rebooted into the pae version and added the pae.bfs module again. Rebooted. No issues at all!  Except that Pulseaudio does no appear to be working. I do not see is with ps -A.
But I have sound.

I do no know what went wrong in the first place, but if anyone else has issues with the new kernel it might be worth trying a few versions. I sure pays off to have a dedicated boot partition.

Mellon

[mellon]

An update on my previous post.

I have now updated my laptop and - like I did with my desktop - I changed my partitions and created a small boot partition on disk 1 (HD0). I set up Grub and amended the menu.lst file. That all went fine.

However, I noticed the same strange boot behaviour whereby the system during boot (verbose was on) switched the screen resolution, presented me with a lot of lines on the nouveau driver, delayed for a whole minute before starting init5 and failed to start x.
The 'solution' I found for the desktop did not work. The normal 3.2.18-pclos1 kernel this time gave me the same type of trouble.

The solution was actually to be found in the stanza of the old kernel. I had to add the NOKMSBOOT option.

I have see some recent posts about strange graphical issues. Perhaps it may be worth while checking the boot options.

Strangely enough on my desktop the NOKMSBOOT option is not required. But I have (re-)added it, just to be sure.

The laptop has a GeForce 9200 M GS (driver 302.17); the desktop a GeForce GT 520 (driver 302.17).

Mellon

[Neal ManBear]

mellon,
Did you install the kernel with the updates? That can cause a problem. A kernel should always be installed after doing a full upgrade.     

Try 3.2.18-pclos2 kernel. Choose the one that works best for you -- bfs, pae-bfs, a64, pae or whatever.