I am a newbie, and i guess im doing something very obviously wrong and stupid and i apologise for wasting anyones time.

However, i have just purchased a cheap mandrake 7.2 CD and tried to install from CD onto a PC currenyl running Windows Me (and hope to use DiskDrake to setup my partitions automatically during the install) but the install program is not detecting my USB mouse or keyboard.

Ive tried finding my PNP OS etc. option in my BIOS but there isnt one, ive also read just about every HOWTO and NHF help file there is on installing Linux (i understand most of it) but i cant even get into the install.

What do i do?

A very confused but not impatient newbie of newbies. Thanx.

jon_currell

i read somewhere that linux might not detect usb devices (but this was for older version of linux so don't know if it still applies) try pluggin in ps/2 mouse and see if it detects that

im not able to do this because i have no other ports on my box, just USB.......rubbish.

If mandrake doesnt work, i dont suppose theres any halp for me using another distro?

Thanx..jon

What kernel comes with mandrake 7.2? You will need either a 2.4.x series or a 2.2.x where x is atleast 18. Kernels before this did not support USB.