Downloaded Live CD last night, of Mandriva One.

When it boots, it gives me a HUGE dialog box, that takes up a major portion of the middle of the screen, and the font is HUGE (about 5-10x too large). I can see a truncated word/sentence, a Cancel button (functional), and an OK button, greyed out.
There's no way of scrolling anything, and I can't get past that point.

Nowhere am I given an opportunity to confirm if the correct screen has been chosen, nor am I presented any options.

Any suggestions?


My hardware is:
I use a standard Toshiba Satellite - A100-VA7
Centrino chipset, core2duo from a few years back, 2GB RAM.
I don't know much about the graphics card... 15.4", 1280-800 LCD

here is an excerpt from LSPCI:
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/PM/GMS, 943/940GML and 945GT Express Memory Controller Hub (rev 03)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS, 943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)
00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS/GME, 943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 02)

I also have this problem on an old Compaq Presario V5000 laptop with a totally unrelated video card (ATi Radeon Express 200M). Starts up with a dialog box with such huge fonts that you can only read about 3 words.

So I restarted and tried using F3 to select "Text Mode" from the graphical boot screen. This produced no effect whatsoever, it still tried to do a graphical install with the resultant massive font. At this point I was totally confused.

Anyone else have a workaround for this?

Many thanks!

Press F3 about every second before main screen, hit F3 again to select text mode, then F4 for Safe Mode, arrow up to select Run 2010.

Ironically, their "text mode" brought me into a graphical mode installer that works!

Firefox crashed when launching twice and closing one of the sessions.
WiFi forces me to enter a WPA key before continuing, but typing in the box does not enter the key... oddly the box remains blank while you type, (yes, I'm in the box), doesn't register anything, and doesn't connect.
The title bar from the programs you launch position by default beyond the top of the screen... meaning, if you don't have a menu item where you can select File Quit, you're out of luck. It stays on the screen. A good example of this, is the configuration menus.
Some of the configurations items (screen options) are not accessible (and I don't mean the non-applicable ones).

This software is FULL of bugs.

This looks very much like amateurs' attemps at a "marketing coup" by drawing attention to their release in being one of the first "2010" releases... but in reality, consider this as a beta or untested software, because it's got a ways to go before it's fully functional.

Their "task-oriented" desktop is what attracted me, but their philosophy in delivering a problematic product, and the challenges in accessing their support forums, tells me this is the tip of the iceberg in frustrations. I am moving on to other distros.

I just installed Mandriva 2010 into my Toshiba Satellite M200 with spec pretty similar to yours. I didn't face this issue at all. But conversely I tried Ubuntu 9.10 and it completely failed to detect my hardrive. I found the solution for that in the Ubuntu forums. You should have a read through the Mandriva 2010 Errata for a possible solution. I think it may have something to do with KMS.

Every distro release has it's issues, don't be so quick to dismiss a distro over 1 experience. If it didn't work for you this time, you should come back & try the next release.