Fatal server error:could not open default font 'fixed'?

[gregory mott <gmott ntlworld com>]

hi,

i installed rh9, and much of it comes up and hums happily (server type
stuff, eg kernel, network, adsl, named, dhcp...) but X won't go.  X
still works great under rh7.3.  i notice Xconfigurator is gone.  i tried
redhat-config-xfree86, got:
      * ddcprobe returned bogus values:
      ID:   MEIa30a
      Name: None
      HorizSync: None
      VertSync:  None
      Couldn't start X server, trying with a fresh configuration
      * ddcprobe returned bogus values:
      ID:   MEIa30a
      Name: None
      HorizSync: None
      VertSync:  None
      Trying with card: SiS 6326
      xconf.py: Fatal IO error 2 (Connection reset by peer) on X server :17.0.

/var/log/messages says:
Jun  1 19:18:46 ruby xfs: xfs startup succeeded
Jun  1 19:18:47 ruby init: Id "x" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes

XFree86.setup.log says:
Could not init font path element unix/:7100, removing from list!
Fatal server error:
could not open default font 'fixed'

i tried:
   cd /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc
   mkfontdir
but no difference.

i bet i got in this pickle because my rh9 install (via ftp) crashed
(presumably a network hiccup), and i resumed it as an upgrade.  so a way
out likely is to just byte it and start over with a fresh install
again.  but is there another way anyone is aware of?

in case it helps:
rpm -qa|grep -i fonts|sort
fonts-ISO8859-7-1.0-2
fonts-ISO8859-7-100dpi-1.0-2
fonts-ISO8859-7-75dpi-1.0-2
fonts-ISO8859-7-Type1-1.0-2
fonts-KOI8-R-100dpi-1.0-1
ghostscript-fonts-5.50-3
tetex-fonts-1.0.7-47
ttfonts-1.0-9
ttfonts-ja-1.2-8
urw-fonts-2.0-17
XFree86-100dpi-fonts-4.2.0-8
XFree86-75dpi-fonts-4.2.0-8
XFree86-base-fonts-4.2.0-8
XFree86-ISO8859-15-100dpi-fonts-4.2.0-8
XFree86-ISO8859-15-75dpi-fonts-4.2.0-8
XFree86-ISO8859-2-100dpi-fonts-4.2.0-8
XFree86-ISO8859-2-75dpi-fonts-4.2.0-8
XFree86-truetype-fonts-4.2.0-8