Hi Can be frustrating to track down for sure. Definitely check the shell stuff as others have suggested but the DE can also auto-start things so lets not limit the search to shell login or startup scripts. I'd check all auto-started scripts as well. Here's some things you may want to consider: 1) check all auto started scripts. 2) is it the first terminal you open or every terminal after that too 3) what happens if you switch to VT and login as yourself? Any egrep stuff? 4) reboot and login to VT (i.e. do not login to desktop). switch to VT and login - does that have a problem? Unlike (3) this will cover the case of something being done only first time its run (unlike (3)) 5) You could also try using find to grep for egrep, something like: find ~/ -type f -exec grep 'egrep' {} /dev/null \; or any other directory aside from your home dir that may be relevant. good luck. gene