[SOLVED] keyboard stopped working in xfce gui with 4.3 kernel

another fresh install of 14.2, well, it has an old kernel but is new anyway. i installed on an hp laptop and had everything working, updated through slackpkg, installed wicd for wifi, and ran mkconfig to get a command for the new boot option, and when i rebooted into it, the keyboard isn't working any longer. i tried booting into the old one and it didn't help, so i tried logging back into the root account on both boot options and it still isn't working. it works just fine before i startx, and then no keyboard in anything: folders, games, terminal, vi, nano, kate, anything i have tried to open won't take the keyboard input but when i logout and drop to runlevel 3 it works again. any ideas on how to get it back before reinstalling? not much to blow away but it would be nice to figure out what happened.