Hi All,
Well something has changed ! I did an update last night and this morning found that I could no longer get to my desktop using the technique of waiting for the password to disappear.
Now both my user name and the password are cleared ! However reinstating them both and pressing enter left me with the desktop failing to load and then a dark blue screen.
Eventually I got a working desktop on one of the tty's. But only Kmail and Iceweasel work. The other applications including Synaptic, that I tried don't.
Not good ! For the uninitiated this means that their machine is effectively unuseable.
HTH.