Phoenix 2009.4 booting to black screen with X mouse.

[MadCatMk2]

Hello everyone,
My Phoenix installation has been working fine for a few weeks now. Yesterday at some point the system became unresponsive for an unknown reason and I hit Ctrl+Alt+Backspace, being in a hurry. The screen flashed several times trying to start x again but failed, complaining about the server already running.
Now I can only boot into X as root properly. Booting as a user starts x, shows the nvidia logo and then I'm dumped to a black screen with the X cursor on it.
Any configuration files I can check to figure out what the problem is?

Thank you

[MadCatMk2]

Just to clarify, I boot as root by running startx. It's gdm that's not working apparently.
I tried reinstalling it after complete removal but no luck.

[MadCatMk2]

when it gets to the cursur ....log in as root but dont type startx ... type video and setup your graphic card again ... once you have selected and accepted your graphics card  then reboot

Did that. It had worked in the past but it doesn't seem to be the issue now.

[MaddogF16]

Use the livecd and run a file system check on it. PM  OP and I'm sure he can get you rolling on that avenue.