KDE hangs in mid login after upgrade to 3.4

[Ross Boylan]

I just upgraded from KDE 3.3 -> 3.4 (Debian testing distribution).
Now, when I login via kdm, the window that shows progress in
starting up appears and then freezes showing something between 30 and
50% complete.  It doesn't consume any noticeable CPU, but it doesn't
progress any further.  I'm not sure which of the icons it was on at
the time, though an earlier message on this list seemed to indicate
that the x% complete appears during the session startup phase.

I don't hear any sound, and I'm not sure the sound was working even
before the upgrade.  I have a 2.4 kernel with alsa.

.xsession-errors on the account of my attempted login reports
different errors on different attempts, but the messages generally have
something to do with sound.  For example, on my first attempt the log
ended with
------------------------------
kbuildsycoca: WARNING: '/usr/share/applications/mplayer.desktop' specifies undefined mimetype/servicetype 'video/x-ms-wmx'
kbuildsycoca: WARNING: '/usr/share/applications/mplayer.desktop' specifies undefined mimetype/servicetype 'video/x-ms-wvx'
DCOP Cleaning up dead connections.
libhal.c 767 : org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceDoesNotExist raised
"Service "org.freedesktop.Hal" does not exist"

konsole: WARNING: Unable to use /usr/share/apps/konsole/mc.desktop
konsole: WARNING: Unable to use /usr/share/apps/konsole/mc.desktop
konsole: WARNING: Unable to use /usr/share/apps/konsole/sumc.desktop
konsole: WARNING: Unable to use /usr/share/apps/konsole/sumc.desktop
kmix: ERROR: Mixer_ALSA::setEnumIdHW(25), errno=-22
---------------------------------------

I have tried various things gleaned from the list archives and the
FAQ.  I tried renaming and removing configuration files (under
.kde/share/config).  My final list of removals was kcmartsrc kcmkmixrc
knotifyrc kmixctrlrc kmixrc kmixrceTS6qc.new.  I also tried creating a
kcmartsrc that included only 
[Arts]
StartServer=false

After this I got errors from KMix, leading to my attempts to disable
it.

I deleted /tmp/kde-ross, ~ross/.DCOPServer, and various tmp and cache
dirs under .kde.

I don't know if deleting these directories could itself be causing
trouble.

My experiments changed the .xsession errors somewhat, but I never managed to
login.  I shut down kdm and restarted it after each attempt.

Any suggestions?

Thanks.

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