Wow, this place is great, thanks for being there everyone!
Being a long time technician, I thought I might dig into the one area that I am a newbie at - Linux. (I'll probably stay with Mandriva 2006.)

So, now here I am, looking for questions, or help finding the answers, cause I am SURE I am not the first to see this stuff, my system is too common. I have watched re-installations of Linux about 20 times now.

Here it is.

Athlon XP Barton @ 2.2 Ghz
ASUS A7N8X Deluxe 2.0 (Nforce2)
WIndows XP Home SP2
1024 Mb DDR400 Sdram
Powercolor Radeon 9700 Pro
Maxtor Diamondmax 9 160 GB IDE HD
Sound Blaster Audigy 2
ATI TV-WONDER PRO
Three Liteon Burners
Viewsonic G90fb-2 19" monitor
HP Photosmart 1115 Printer

Ok, let's go from worst to least.

-----One-----
My video is dissapearing! Whenever I try to shutdown, or log out, pretty much anything that drops the resolution after being in KDE, my video output goes poof. The monitor acts like the computer is shut off. Ok, this is frequent, but sometimes intermittent. I don't think that it's an excessive refresh rate, my monitor would tell me.

I have established that... The system is, usually, as far as I can tell, dropping to an invisible command prompt. I can shutdown the system from the keyboard most of the time.

I have tried... Every possible driver choice for my video card listed, pretty much everything radeon... (Reinstalling linux each time!!!), also, I tried generic monitor drivers which were lower in refresh then my own, which is listed.

I also thought, hey this is a freak problem, if I try another distro, it'll be gone. So I downloaded Mandriva, and it was the same. (Ok, it's nearly identical. Bad choice.) Then I decided to go Fedora, which is also supposed to be good for people like me, and, wow, it STILL happens!

What the HECK is this? It has never happened in Windows. Unlikely to be bad hardware.

-----Two-----
I have more then one sound device on my system, and I want to use the Audigy 2 as the main device. Disabling the Nforce2 sound is NOT an option. I use it too much. I also have a USB handset for VOIP battling for supremacy. All the drivers appear to install properly, and the mixer shows them as options, but the default is what I need to change. I assume that Kmix (name right?) comes up initailly with the driver that is the default. I have read some info in here on this, but it didn't give me enough to go on.. for my situation. I am assuming that KDE decides which device that the software uses. I have been through all of the settings dialogs in KDE, and I don't see any success. I think I have to edit a .conf file somewhere, but I don't know what to put in where!

-----Three-----
I'd like to change the default boot OS in the bootloader, and I can probably figure this out in time, but if someone has a link for me to read, I'd love it.

Thanks in advance for the help everyone! I'll dish out any info needed as quick as I can.

PD

I have pretty much fixed issues two and three.

The bootloader option setting was found here -
arul.telenet-systems.com/info/changingBootSequence.php
(Although logging in as root wasn't as simple as they said.)


Credit goes to another post in here for (mostly) fixing the default sound card issue.

the /etc/modprobe.conf file is shown here...

# This file is autogenerated from /etc/modules.conf using generate-modprobe.conf command

alias eth0 forcedeth
remove snd-emu10k1 /sbin/modprobe -r snd-pcm-oss; /sbin/modprobe --first-time -r --ignore-remove snd-emu10k1
install snd-emu10k1 /sbin/modprobe --first-time --ignore-install snd-emu10k1 && { /sbin/modprobe snd-pcm-oss; /bin/true; }
alias sound-slot-0 snd-emu10k1
alias sound-slot-1 snd-intel8x0
alias eth2 eth1394
install usb-interface /sbin/modprobe ohci-hcd; /sbin/modprobe ehci-hcd; /bin/true
alias eth1 3c59x
alias ieee1394-controller ohci1394
remove snd-intel8x0 /sbin/modprobe -r snd-pcm-oss; /sbin/modprobe --first-time -r --ignore-remove snd-intel8x0
install snd-intel8x0 /sbin/modprobe --first-time --ignore-install snd-intel8x0 && { /sbin/modprobe snd-pcm-oss; /bin/true; }
remove audigy /sbin/modprobe --first-time -r --ignore-remove audigy
install audigy /sbin/modprobe --first-time --ignore-install audigy


I changed around the slot numbers on these lines, and moved the audigy driver entry above the other.

alias sound-slot-0 snd-emu10k1
alias sound-slot-1 snd-intel8x0

Now things work good, but if I have my USB handset plugged in, it seems that 'usually', the driver for THAT one takes over, and neither of the other two show in the mixer. I can live with that I guess. I don't really need it for now. But I would still love a solution!!

Don't know why there is no mention of that device in the file above. All pretty greekish to me.

Still open for suggestions on the video problem!! I have settled on Mandrake 10.1, since mandriva seems to go blank on me when ENTERING Kde. I had it working at one time, but I forget how. Not worth it, I'll learn Mandrake.

Real stumper isn't it?? I do notice that the Radeon 9700 pro isn't getting a glaringly positive response in the compatability list, but it just seems like such a common chipset now...?

Time to try to learn how to install the ATI drivers..... heh heh heh

TIA
PD