how to boot into GUI Mandrake 10
 

Simple installation worked fine all was well till I handed it over to a friend to look at. Now when I select linux from the menu it boots but I dont enter into the GUI just a black screen asking me to login how do I get it back into the gui

and stay there

??????

The setting is called initdefault, in the file /etc/inittab. You want to change this to 5 to get your computer to boot into the GUI. After you save this change, subsequent reboots will take you to an X-Windows login.

You can also boot into the GUI as a one-off by typing in 5 at the menu when you select Linux.

by default your linux boots in text mode.
this is a fast solution to run the gui, just run the command 'startx`.
I should know your distro to tell you about making it boot in GUI.

Cheers found file but not sure how to edit this
sorry for being a pain also when I selected Linux I couldnt see were to enter the 5 from

Thanks already tried that but get fatal errors

Editing the file in text mode is fairly easy; you just need a text-mode editor. I'd suggest trying lilo, pico or nino if you have then, or failing that emacs or vi.

if startx fails, that's the problem which I faced n times in mdk10... In the installation, that problem is mdk10 monitor configuration problem... I solved that problem by installing again with other monitor settings...

the line you want to add "5" to looks like this:

id:3:initdefault:

It is simply change the three or whatever number is there, to a five and save the file before closing it.
Myself I use Kwrite for editing files like this. Kwrite is straitforward, same as notepad in Windoze.