Hi, I am new to Linux. Hope I can get help to start it for the first time.

Installed Mandrake 9.1 on a triple boot system with Windows ME and XP.

Linux was installed on a free space and installation went smooth. My hardware was identified:
ymfpci sound card, USB hp printer, TNT video card, network card, ricoh 9060 dvd/cd burner, and my wheel mouse.

I have a win-modem, that I know it should not recognize.

LILO works great, but here is the thing:

When I boot linux, it loads everything with all the nice messages of kernel doing this and USB doing that, and then it starts KDE. It changes my screen mode, shows the KDE default blue wall paper and that's about it. There are some flickers of apps running in the background, I can get a glimpse of the task bar and after that the cursor changes its icon from arrow to clock and back all the time. It keeps doing it for as long as I can wait. I waited for at least 15 min, which I believe is a reasonable time even for a first time settings.

What is wrong here?
Is there a way to configure what needs to be configured from command line?

How do I do that?

Would a re-install needed? Would it help?

Thanks

How many MBs is your memory card? It seems you must have at least 64MB of memory so that KDE starts properly.

I'm not sure what would make you think that but it's simply not true, kde 3.xx will start with less than 64mb video memroy.

Did it ever work? Did you configure your monitor setting in the summary page of the install? If not it may be set to a resolution that the monitor or card can't do. My old system would do that. It's a real bummer. I had to reinstall because I couldn't fix it.

You may want to try ctrl alt backspace and see if you can get x to kill. If you can there is hope yet. Then at least you can type in this.

shutdown -h now for halt or power off
shutdown -r now for reboot

Then maybe you can change it from command line. Post back if the x does kill. Somebody can walk you through it.

Hope that helps.

"shows the KDE default blue wall paper and that's about it"
If the background shows up, then this is not an XFree86 problem, it's a KDE problem. Check your /var/log/messages and/or /var/log/syslog for errors, you can also check /var/log/XFree86.0.log to see if this is true.

if you are getting to the point of seeing the mouse cursor (the arrow and clok thing) then it's probably not a hardware problem - though I stand to be corrected. Try do the following:

press Ctrl+Alt+F1
this will get you to a text login screen. Type in your user name and then the password.

type 'su' (without the ')
type in the root password

type 'init 3'
if it seems to get stuck press ctrl-C

type 'exit'

type 'startx'

Does this get KDE started?

If not repeat the above but now do
startx starticewm

This will attempt to start icewm. If this works, there is some problem with kde.

Thanks for all the help. The tips regarding icewm worked. I have reinstalled Mandrake, and this time it worked. Perhaps one of the RPMs was damaged.

Zoltar