As a new user to linux, deleted windows yesterday and loaded Mandrake version 9, i was disappointed at not being able to use view a cdr that had worked under win98, it contained mp3's, under the file manager it did not say that it contained any folders or files. A similar problem with the floppy disks which i zipped up all my documentation etc. It gave me error messages telling me that it the file did not exist.

Also my sound card does not produce any noise what-so ever, both of these problems are very frustrating as these are the two main uses of my PC, music and work, i may have to go back to win 98 if i can't sort these problems.

For the sound, that's simple: go to the aumixer and take mute of and put the volumes high, save the settings, then go to kmix, you'll get a little blue speaker on the "taskbar" rightclick it and put the volumes up.

As for your CD's and floppy's: you should be able to read them, see if the device is mounted: mount /dev/cdrom, /mnt/cdrom. Same for the floppy.

Bruno

thanks for the, advice, i'm sure on the filemanager it said someting along the lines of /mnt/cdrom which i clicked on. do i type these in at the at the command line?

mount /dev/cdrom, /mnt/cdrom. Same for the floppy.

Can you not access files on floppy and cds directly through the file manager, or is the 'mounting' operation a one time procedure?

Thanks once again, i would love it if i could erase windows from my life.

Well, usaly it gets mounted automaticly with automount, but you never know what went wrong, so doing those lines at the commandline will mount them if they would not be mounted.
do
su
rootpassword
mount /dev/cdrom
mount /mnt/cdrom
then do:
cd /mnt/cdrom
ls
this should list the contents of your CD

Bruno