Hello hello. After enduring the scorge of MS I realized it was time to return to Linux. I copied the 4 Slack 10.1 FTP install floppy images from an adjunct of the official site...however, for some reason I could not get them to recognize my ethernet card, even though it is a common built-in 3com piece. I thought inserting my Slack 9.1 cd in place of the networking floppy would help, because 9.1 always recogized the card. However, I was mistaken in that regard. So, I decided to just install 9.1. All went well...extremely straightforward install. Towards the end I chose the framebuffer console...yet, as soon as I get to LILO and start booting linux, the first thing it tells me is "invalid parameter entered, select one from the list below or 'scan'" -- I have no idea what is going on here. From there it goes completely smoothly, except I cannot get X to work. I usually just get a completely blank screen. If i switch consoles no errors are present. If anyone has idea what is wrong I would love to know. Thank you

As a weird kind of update...xf86cfg starts up X running TabWM...though it is very small, with a graphical x config in the background. I am not sure what could be at fault here., then...

rerun liloconfig and choose the non-framebuffer textmode, or add vga=792 to the append line to make the frame buffer work.
use xf86config to configure X.
run xwmconfig to choose a different window manager

Thanks for your reply! I had run xf86config before running xf86cfg- the latter I had no idea even existed. Anyways, I have no clue as to the specifics of this video card- it is a Dell box I just happened to inherit, with one of those weird untamperable cases. I thought the framebuffer console would be a viable generic solution to not knowing a lot about the video card..

I tried switching window managers, with xwmconfig, or just editing the .xinitrc...but all of them brought up that strange blank screen. This is when I start it with startx. But xf86cofg (which I guess is just an alias for "X -config" starts X running tabwm by default. It just doesn't made sense to me how this could be so.

After running xf86cfg you can look at the generated XF86Config file to see what card and driver are needed. Also, 'lspci' might show the graphics card.

This is so weird. I have searched all sorts of forums and not found anything like this. Sorry for the lack of clarity int he earlier posts, I was u s ing Lynx and could only read one line of input text at a time.

For some reason, xf86cfg boots up a perfectly good X console with TabWM. From here I can actually use an xterm and kill Tab and start wmaker...

It's just that, startx itself brings up nothing but a mess of colors, although reporting no errors in its log.

I have the feeling it's either something really simple or really grave. Anyways, gsomethingashley person, your advice was very helpful. Even though it didn't fix my problem per se I learned something from it . I'm thinking it might be time to downgrade a version/

I'm just wondering, does xf86cfg saves the config file? If it does, where it does? Be sure it is inside /etc/X11..

there is a program lshw that will list all hw in ur pc. It's at linux packages web site if google search on ur pc specs and screen specs not available. Those specs will help with xf86config. Happy slacking.