so yes, i just installed fedora core 3. everything went fine, i started x and the desktop appeared. but i couldnt move the mouse. its just like it's not detected.
that is kind of an embarrassing situation and i must admit that i have absolutely no idea of what to do.

that's not much said, but anyone could help me?

(im currently on winshit yeah)

check your xorg.conf make sure this is in it if you have a usb mouse. stick around these boards if that doesn't fix it.

Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"

and if it's not, what am i to do?

oh and is there a shortcut to bring the console while on the desktop? because i had some bad memories using that vim thing.

oh and yes, i have a logitech usb optical mouse. with a nice little wheel on it.

alas!

OK since I don't know how to start console without mouse, We'll have to go the harder way, unless someone out there has a better idea. First, is your boot loader GRUB?. If it is, at your OS selection screen move the highlighted line to the on that says Fedora Core, press 'e' (the 's are to indicate what to press , dont try to press those). you should have a blinking cursor right after the last word from the line, type "single"(no "s). press Esc, and then with the highlight on the same line press 'b'. this should prevent X from starting(let me know if it works). Now you should have a prompt similar to this
logon(user name, whatever):<type root>
password:<enter root password>
go to /etc

now do
fdisk /dev/hda<enter>
You should see something like:
The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 4864.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
(e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)

Command (m for help):
type :
p<enter>
you should see, something similar to:
Disk /dev/hda: 40.0 GB, 40007761920 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4864 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 3328 26732128+ c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/hda2 3329 4734 11293695 83 Linux
/dev/hda3 4735 4864 1044225 82 Linux swap

look for a line that says W95 FAT32, or a line that has NTFS , like mine is
/dev/hda1 * 1 3328 26732128+ c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
now you know where your windows partition is , like mine is /dev/hda1 ,
but yours may be different

now type
mkdir /windows<enter>
and then do
pico fstab<enter>
I am using pico , since you said , you do not feel comfortable with vi
you should see sth. like:

/dev/hda3 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/hda2 / reiserfs defaults 1 1
/dev/hda1 /windows vfat user,umask=000,rw,auto 1 0
/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom iso9660 noauto,owner,rw 0 0
/dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto noauto,owner 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0

now do you see mine says :
/dev/hda1 /windows vfat user,umask=000,rw,auto 1 0

add the same in yours, but where it says /dev/hda1, put wherever your windows partition was found by fdisk , might be the same , might be different. if yours was FAT32 , copy the rest of the line exacly like mine, if yours was NTFS, change my vfat to ntfs, the rest is the same. now hold ctrl and press 'o'(letter), to save and then ctrl and x to exit. restart your comp by typing
shutdown -r 0<enter> (that's a zero)
to the "single" thing in grub again go to /etc/X11
type
ls<enter>
you should see xorg.conf or xfree86.org(don't exactly remember this one;s name)
if it's xorg.conf:
type cp xorg.conf /windows/
if it's xfree86.conf, type:
cp xfree86.conf /windows/

restart, go to windows open your C: drive , you should see the .conf file
open it with notepad, copy it and paste it here so we can see it.
I know that this may be a little overkill for just copying your file here, but I don't have another idea, plus after doing all that you will have access to your windows partition from linux, plus I am the first one ready to help, so please anybody, do not flame me for confusing a noob. Also after we finish I'll actually explain you what we did and you will learn some things, instead of just following someone blindly

I know this may look confusing for a noob, but don't worry , just follow instructions, and ask if you have question

just trying to help, I don't want to confuse you