I have been running Mandrake 8.2 on a Toshiba Sat Pro 490CDT for some time.

The Problem I have is if I try to upgrade to a later version of the distro. What generally happens is that I can generally get the installation to the X bit and then the whole thing crashes. After a reboot Mandrake Linux is there but I can only get it to run in text mode.

The problem seems to be (and I am guessing) that only XFree86 v 3 will work with this laptop.

Is there an easy way (bare in mind I am a bit of a noob) that I can upgrade to Mandrake 10 but still use XFree86 v3. Can't seem to find a way to do this in the nice GUI install.

Thanks
Mori

moribund; check out the HCL in this lqo http://www.linuxquestions.org/hcl/index.php internal storage devices n laptops. u may find answers.

No real help there.
Thanks for the tip though.

Without seeing any error messages, it's hard to do more than give broad help. But, http://www.antlinux.com/Toshiba490XCDT/ from www.linux-laptop.net deatils how someone got Debian working on that machine. There may be information relevant to your case in there.

thanks for the tip there is some good info there. I got mine working in the end by re installing Mandrake 8.2 with the option "expert" from the gui install as this allows you to choose between Xfree86 3 and Xfree86 4 (which never seems to work <shrug>). Then I used the Upgrade option from Mandrake 10. It's not perfect still need to get the sound working but that seems to be a common problem with these laptops and Linux.

Many thanks
Moribund

moribund; thats what forums are for! we all help each other.