Looks like crap on mine also
 

Well, I gave up on Mandrake after literally over a dozen attempts to install it. I decided to try DSL and it seems to work beautifully other than I cannot get the screen resolutions set properly. If I try XVesa, It gives me a window with a lone "Ok" button. That's real helpful, let me tell you. <eye rolling> I try XSetup, and it gives me a shell-like program that actually illuminates a couple of words, and the rest (at least I assume there's a "rest" of it..) is black. I try what little I can to modify the settings, by changing the pixels and bits, and it doesn't seem to modify the screen settings at all.

HELP! This is my last option to access the info on this hard drive.

ARGH!

-A

can you edit XF86Config-4 file

Take the drive out...
Stick it in another computer...
Backup all data to the other computer. ..

Is this not an option? I mean, even if [you|your friends] can't do it (for whatever reason), then any local computer repair shop would be glad to do it for you.

Why not try a Mandrake liveCD? They make it really easy to access data on physical drives...

Well, I would love to do a Mandrake LiveCD if I could figure out a way to get Mandrake working in the first place. So far, I have a dozen CDs in the trash and have been fighting Linux for months. I'm bagging Linux and going back to Windows.

wonderboy1999,

please don't dispair! My system rescue panacea is Knoppix - it runned on every box I put it in up to now. I had probelms with other live boots, but IMHO knoppix has the best Hardware detection and HW support. I even fixed broken Windows Boxes with it! Check out the boot options (F3 when the lilo prompt appears or KNOPPIX-cheatcodes.txt on the distro servers), there are dozens of options for advanced Hardware-Detection or exclusion of problematic drivers.

If you can get a Knoppix CD, this might be the way to get back you HDD data - maybe, you only have to fix some init.d and get your box back online. All the best!

HTH, Peter