hi I am using Mandriva 2011 and recently I am experiencing issues with KDE booting. At first I thought it was because of disk space, I free up 20gb of my disk and after a few reboots I got the same issue:
- KDE takes a while to boot
- I get a black screeen
- Task switcher works as well as Workspace dashboard
- Even the 3D cube works

But there is simply no desktop. I cant start programs or go to Console (alt-ctrl-f1/6) althought that is a different issue since even on a regular KDE, I cant go to console.

So basically I am stuck like that. Anyone can help?

Can you press Alt+F2 to start KRunner?

suggestion - reset Plasma to defaults, if you can't get to Konsole in KDE open a virtual terminal (alt+ctrl+F1), login and run:

kquitapp plasma-desktop
sleep 20s
mkdir -p $HOME/plasma-config/
mv $(kde4-config --localprefix)/share/config/plasma* $HOME/plasma-config/

go back to KDE alt+ctrl+F7, then restart KDE 2*(alt+ctrl+bksp)

$(kde4-config --localprefix) is either ~/.kde or ~/.kde4 depending on your distro