Hi every one, my first dumb question coming up! A little while ago I put a copy of Mandriva (not sure what version number)onto a spare hard drive but was disappointed to find that I could not get on-line with it. I have been told that my lap-top (a Compaq Evo N800c) has a virtual modem that is just software and my copy of Mandriva would only work with a hardware modem. could anyone please point me towards a Linux distribution (I presume that is a fancy word for version, i.e. Mandriva or whatever) that has a virtual modem that will work for me?

you presumably mean a softmodem, in which case linmodems.org has a lot of info. if one distro can't run it, none of them can, as you can add generic drivers to any distro.