Well I finally graduated from the newbie forum, although I'm still hovering about over there. Here I am with Mandrake 9.1 successfully loaded to dual-boot with Windows XP on an HP Pavilion ze5468cl laptop. Unfortunately, I have no sound, and am getting a couple of stranger errors. Here's the run-down on the equipment:

2.66GHz P4 processor
512MB RAM
ATI Mobility Radeon Graphics
Conextant 16-bit Sound Card (SB 16 Pro Clone)
10/100 Ethernet
Wirless (Industry standard)
PCMCIA
56k Onboard Conextant Modem
Texas Instruments 1394 Firewire
Several USB ports
15" TFT Display

When I installed Mandrake the installation kept hanging at the point where it would recognize and attempt to install the Firewire. I resolved the issue by going into expert mode and avoiding installation of the firewire, which of course means that's one piece of hardware that's not working.

It boots into both operating systems just fine. Lilo is working like a dream. I have no errors when I boot into Linux. Video is excellent, but there is no sound. I've run draksound several times. When I choose anything other than the reccomended option, I get nothing at all. When I choose the reccomended option - trident - the speakers pop like they're coming on, but I still get no sound output. I'm still a real newbie so I have no idea where to start with this. I did a search for sound help, but what I came up with was very advanced and involved reshaping the kernel. I'm not even certain what's wrong, so I don't want to go "fixing" it yet.

Also, I can't figure out where to get API or ACPI from - without it I can't watch the laptop battery.

I'm sure I'll have lots more questions, but any help on the sound card issue would be appreciated. I'm trying to get DVD software to run, but it won't test without sound.. it keeps hanging.

Thanks!

Go to Mandrake Control Center --> Hardware . Try to change driver for sound card to something more appropriate. This is how I got my sound card working. You can visit my post: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...threadid=93122

Hi, I don't know exactly what kind of sound hardware you have, but I tried sucessfully this two ways
1) Using ALSA.
2) recompiling my kernel.
Probably you can find your sound model fron windows, or from HP web site.