I CAN HAZ GNOME CRASH?

Turn on my laptop today, and start up with my daily routine. I log in, check some email and stuff on my family computer, and then click the icon in the corner telling me I have software updates to install.

I open the update manager and read through the list of updates, like I always do. I actually take the time to read through the updates I install unlike most users, I'm sure. The update has something to do with the kernel development header files, and maybe some update to a library (I don't remember now). It looked relatively harmless, so I clicked install. Install goes quickly, and then I'm prompted to restart my laptop so the changes can take effect.

Restart. Boot up. log in. blackness. Nothing appears on my screen for several seconds, then I get an error message from GNOME: "The GNOME session manager was unable to lock the file '/home/andrew/.ICEauthority'. Please report this as a GNOME bug. Sometimes this error may occur if the file's director is unwritable, you could try logging in via the failsafe session and ensuring that it is." I click OK, and it kicks me back to the login screen.

So I try again, same error. I try logging into the failsafe session, same error. Good. I try logging in to a different user account, and that works but it's not what I want. I don't like having my one administrator account locked because of a software problem. So I go looking through the internet and find a series of people who have also received this error, and a series of unhelpful responses. People offer solutions and I try every single one. I create directories, I throw around chmod and chown. nothing works. More then one person suggests the solution to the problem is a fresh install. I find that to be severely upsetting

It's a few minutes later and I'm still fighting with this issue. I'm going to be very upset if I can't get my laptop working again without having to do a complete system reinstall.