When I try to get into the hardware settings the screen goes black (with a little cursor in the upper left corner). Is there something i'm supposed to type after clicking it or what?

Also, I installed the drivers for my Ti4600 (which appeared to go through just fine) and I still get that laggy feeling like in windows when you're running the "VGA Comatible Device" drivers. How can I check to see if the drivers are actually being used by my distro. Thanx in advance for the help.

Specs:
Mandrake 8.0
P4B 2.4 @ 2.7ghz
256 DDR
Chaintech 9EJL1
Chaintech GT61 Ti4600
40/60 WD HDs
SB Platinum Live

Just in case: I'm a to linux, not forums. So keep the "f@#$ off and use the search button" remarks to yourself, I did search.

when you first login to X you should see a Nvidia splash screen. If you don't see it then nvidia drivers are not being used. As to your first problem I've never had that problem but I've also never used 8.0...sorry

Further on El Kid's idea, you are using a 2 year old distro, hence a 2 year old kernel (which is all of the hardware support), with a machine that is about 15 minutes old. If I remember right you have kernel 2.4.3, which means minimal support for P4 motherboards, the AGP bus, even the SB Live has better drivers now. Mandy just released 9.0, which is 3 releases ahead of 8.0.

Technically the rest of the components of Mandy 8.0 are new enough for it to take the 2.4.19 kernel for instance, but as that's running on XFree86 4.0.1 (maybe 4.0.2... I ran that a long time ago), there's a lot better performance out of 4.2.0, which is more or less current.

Cheers,

Finegan
I'm surprised everything didn't go kazoo as P4 DDR boards are definately younger than that kernel.