When i login, i get a dialog saying: HAL not started. I have to manually start it each time. how to start HAL at startup?? i tried sudo update-rc.d hal defaults which gives this message "System startup links for /etc/init.d/hal already exist" In sysv-rc-conf command hal has run level 2 , 3 , 4 , 5. sill HAL daemon does not start despite me being at runlevel 2 . Each time i shut down my computer i get a message : Mar 22 22:03:16 BLUE NetworkManager: nm_device_is_802_11_wireless: assertion `dev != NULL' failed