Console peaced out?

[Jim Maul]

I am running rh9 on a couple machines at work here.  While i was out 
sick one day a co-worker logged into one of the machines and did loaded 
up xwindows (startx).  I (and him) have done this many times in the past 
without a problem but for some reason when he did it this time, he said 
that xwindows started loading but then the screen went black and that 
was it.  I originally thought it might be something with the display 
settings being out of range for the monitor but it appears that is not 
the problem.  The machine responds fine (to ping and such) and i can get 
into it through ssh without and problems but the console appears to be 
hosed.  The keyboard is unresponsive (i cant even get the numlock light 
to come on) and the screen is just sitting there black.  It is not a 
problem with the monitor or anything as i have swapped that out.

I tried killing his session to see if it would log him out and return 
the console to a prompt but that did not happen.  The session ended as 
it not longer is displayed in top or who but still the console remains 
black and the keyboard is unresponsive.

Is there something that i can kill or run to be able to get the console 
back?  This machine usually goes 8-10 months before something comes up 
where it needs to be rebooted and i REALLY dont want to have to reboot 
it now.  Its serving quite a lot for us here.  And yes, i know you 
shouldnt really be running x on a console of a server but hey, he did 
and now its hosed and i gotta deal with it.

Does anyone have any ideas or perhaps more info is needed?

Thanks,

-Jim