I just did the pacman -Syu command today since i have had limited access to internet i could use with arch lately, (been tethering via droid which is only compatible in ubuntu) The command line works fine, i even reinstalled X to see if that was the problem,whenever i do startx it loads up for a second but before my xfce screen even pops up the screen blinks and blackens. anybody know what is wrong?

Here's something you can try (I just tested it).

Arch includes TWM (Tom's Window Manager or, for younger folks, Tabbed Window Manager, though it's strictly not tabbed). If you have no other window manager installed, TWM is there.

Edit your xinitrc file to add this line if it's not already there:

Remark out all the other window managers by putting an # at the beginning of the line, so that twm is the active choice, save the changes, and close the editor.

Issue startx.

X should start to a blank screen (TWM is very basic). Left-clicking the mouse (at least on my Arch in Virtual Box) brings up a menu; open an Xterm and see whether you can run a command from the command prompt in the terminal window.

This will tell you whether the problem is just with XFCE or is a larger problem.

I have had no problem running LXDE or Fluxbox in my virtual installation, but I'm still working on KDE and XFCE. I need to revisit the Arch wiki; no doubt I missed something.

In the meantime, you might take a look at Fluxbox. It has become my favorite GUI for Linux.

I know on my Arch Linux box that if Xorg crashes it gives me a screen telling what occurred. Frankbell is correct that you might want to try out twm (of course this assumes you did not remove it). If so it is an easy install.

Do you have video drivers that start up with xorg?
If so, do they need to start when you boot the computer now? It does happen that after some time xorg has started requiring the driver to be already running and if it is not already running it will misbehave.

Hope that this was helpful.

Well i have had arch for....god i wanna say about a year and a half now and this is the first time i have had any serious issues. Me and a guy i used to be friends with built my arch and it was such a lengthy process he basically only taught me how to manage the OS, so a lot of what i have figured out has been on my own. The reason i think XFCE is the problem is because i reinstalled X, but it was really late so i did not think to try reinstalling XFCE. IF push comes to shove and something has caused a problem within arch itself i have source mage, sorcerer, and lunar live disks as plan B, but i have gotten a tad off topic. I have not uninstalled anything under my arch....and that might be the problem, a thought literally just occured to me. i run an acer....and the thing sucks big time the hardware is bearable, but severely needs to be better. when we first built my arch(and i haven't had much of a chance to update it since installation) we installed 2 programs that i had forgotten about. One was Ice window manager and the other was compiz fusion. could these be the problem by any chance? And as for the error display...it acts like it is trying to and i see white text for a split second the all graphics die

As far as I know, having other windows managers should have no bearing on your XFCE. If you are not using them, they should just lie there.

You might try running them to make sure they are okay.

If you reinstalled Arch, it could be that some of the libraries that XFCE uses got messed up or overwritten in the process--in my ignorance, that would be one thing I'd look into. I'm trusting you checked the Arch wiki on XFCE to make sure there were no steps missed in installing it.

I know the first time I tried to install KDE in my Arch virtual machine, I missed one of the steps and hosed the KDE so that it crashed back to the command line.

The TWM and Fluxbox continued to work fine.

As Pauline123 suggests, a window manager that crashes back to the command line normally leaves error messages. Maybe you could try taking a picture of the screen and consulting that so as to recall the error messages to help shoot the trouble.

That's the problem, it isn't crashing back to the command line, it acts like it tries to generate an error message then it flickers and the entire screen goes blank, I cnt use the command line, there is no text, no grub, no nothing, all I get is a backlit black screen. A thought just occured, mid installation of packages the net cable came loose in the middle of installation of open office. It aborted upgrading and I ran the syy command since it popped up on iys own for some reason. I reran the syu, everything finished installing and then it all upgraded. So I dnt see of that could be the problem...but it might provide some insight that cn help identify the root of my problem

At this point, an X guru would probably boot to a live CD, such as Knoppix or Slax that's designed for system rescue, and start looking through the X.org configuration files to find the problem.

Not being a guru, I would boot to a live CD, back up all my valuable data from /home to removable media such as USB drives or optical discs (cdrecord can be run over the command line--I'd have to google the command string, but I have done it) or over my network, and reinstall (or install an distribution that's easier to install).

I wish I could help more, but I'm out of ideas.

Hmm a system recovery disk....now I feel dumb for not thinking of that. Thank you so much. You have been an immense help and I think this will help me fix it. I've grown rather fond of arch and really dnt wanna replace it until I find a good manual for w.e I replace it with. I will give the recovery a shot