X locks system up hard (APM?)

[Michael Hipp]

This is a RH 7.3 desktop system ...

If I Ctrl-Alt-F1 over to a console and then flip back, the screen has 
graphical gibberish across the top. And it locks up hard upon return to X. 
An SSH session from another box stays open, but commands like telinit 3 
don't work. But ps aux definitely shows X is running away with the CPU. 
This is the lone entry in /var/log/XFree86.0.log

(II) Open APM successful

And before this APMD was running and it was the one hosing up the CPU. But I 
disabled APMD hoping it would cure the problem.

Anyone know how to troubleshoot this?

Michael