Need a bit of help with ManDriva Powerpack 2008.1
 

Hi all :)

I've made the switch from XP to mandriva 08. (powerpack version). So far im happy with it but now ive hit a brick wall :(

i was hitting key combinations to find out what would bring up a window similar to a process manager... i made it appear once, buggered if i can do it again... CTRL+ALT+DEL didnt work :( so for all this keypressing i hit CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE... Big mistake!

it switched my login screen to an alternative more basic looking one and need to know how to switch it back to what i had before! (the standard mandriva login screen)

Please don't tell me to go to the configure you computer in the K menu, every time i try to run that it asks for root password, i enter it, nothing happens!

At one time i had a message appearing saying: only available in HAL mode... whatever that is...

My linux knowledge is limited when it comes to X server & kde, when i first started experimenting with mandrake years ago i did so on a command line base.


Another thing that annoys the crap out of me is i tell the system to use XINE to handle all my video files and it always defaults back to TOTEM... i hate totem! and it had no options to change the file types in it. Is there another location or system application that handles this?


I installed the pc purely as a workstation, and i WAS in the middle of running updates off the net using info from easyurpmi as my distro, and since i cant get to configure my computer section i can't update as the icon isnt appearing in the system tray applet for it either...


any advise or help woulf be appreciated. Thanks!

CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE should only restart X. If you do a full reboot I'll bet good money that your previously selected boot manager will be what shows

additional info:
 

my apologies i knew i forgot something...

the system has been rebooted several times, same problem. it wont let me login as root, i still cant access the configure your computer area which is what i need. If this cant be resolved i'll format and start again


ps: i won't hold you to that bet :)

Since where I live all I can spend is US Dollars, GOOD MONEY won't do me much good anyway ;-)

hi, i know very little about those things. HAL means hardware abstracton layer,something to do with how kernel interacts with what you have.
i got mandriva powerpack 2008.0 from a magazine with DVD and love it a lot, although i cannot do very much, lack of knowledge. what i usually do in similar situations is to insert the installation disk and newly install, WITHOUT formatting any disk. the wizard will ask "partition to format" and usually suggest something, like sda8 o similar. here you HAVE TO select"none", than later, after selecting packages, (here occurs something lixe expand/collapse tree) you can set the root password new. i guess that if you decide for kde instead of gnome, it might be default to use xine and not the other you so strongly dislike. hope you succeed