maybe its just me, and if it is, I should probably hang myself. I installed fedora 7, finally got it to start the xserver after having to flassh my bios, finally got my wireless card working with ndiswrapper, everything seems to be going Ok. One problem... how in the hell do you shut down the computer?

After searching forever online (which, why would anyone ever put such an obvious thing as how to shutdown on a site), I came to the conclusion that shutdown SHOULD be listed under the system menu. On mine, however, my system menu goes: Preferences, administration, help, about gnome, about fedora, log out root..., and suspend. Is something screwed up here, or am I a complete idiot?

Don't get down on yourself, I don't have fedora but I would check under "log out" and there should be options to "restart" - "Shutdown" etc.

The "log out root" worries me, are you always logging in as root? That's considered to be a big security risk.

I've had the similar symptoms to yours with core6, but only when I initially booted to the command line, then did a "startx". When I went to shutdown, there's no "quit" button, only "logout". I had to do a "poweroff" to shutdown. Not sure why that would happen if you're booting straight into gnome.

well I've only just installed, so I'm logged in as root till I can get everything up and running. I haven't created my user account yet, but thats to come. You mentioned that you only had this issue when you log in in text mode and startx. This is what I'm doing also, as when I changed the default runlevel in inittab to 5, for some reason it would only let my resolution go up to 800x600, whereas if I run startx it lets me have the full range. When I run startx, I don't have the shutdown option, or even "power off" as you mentioned. The only way I can shutdown is to open a shell and 'shutdown -r 0'. Frustrating, but doable. If you have any idea why I cant up the resolution when runlevel is 5, I would much rather boot directly into gnome anyhow. Thanks for your input.

Sounds like you had a different install experience to me, my user account was set up as part of the install process.

resolution and stuff is set up in /etc/X11/xorg.conf You need to have the correct video card and monitor details there.
If it's any help, this is mine, yours of course needs to reflect what you have.

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor0"
VendorName "NEC"
ModelName "NEC V730"
DisplaySize 330 250
HorizSync 30.0 - 70.0
VertRefresh 50.0 - 120.0
Option "dpms"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard0"
Driver "sis"
VendorName "Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS]"
BoardName "661/741/760/761 PCI/AGP VGA Display Adapter"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Videocard0"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 24
Modes "1152x864" "1152x768" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 16
Modes "1152x864" "1152x768" "1024x768" "800x600"
EndSubSection
EndSection

thanks for the suggestions.. I'll definitely have to try that when I get home tonight. Yeah, during the install, I hadn't flashed the bios yet, so the xserver was unable to start and I had to do the install in text mode. Maybe that's why I didn't get the opportunity to set up the user accounts? It only asked me for the root pass. Not sure. I imagine that if I start in runlevel 5 I'll have the shutdown option, however I'll have to check to be sure, as I didnt stay in it long once I realized i couldn't resize the resolution. Thanks again!

type this in ur Konsole

do save all ur work

and u aint stupid just a noob like we all are

Here's my xorg.conf file's contents (obviously not correct). My question is, how does it know what to use when I run startx? If I know where it is getting these settings, maybe I can copy into the xorg.conf file.

edit: oh yeah, and the important part of my lspci output is as follows if it helps:
edit2: I ran xorg -configure and got this file:

Unless you specify your screen sizes, the X server is supposed to get that information from your monitor. (There's a command to which the monitor is supposed to respond with a list of the screen resolutions it supports.)

Are you using a log-in manager? GDM, KDM? Those have a large role to play in shutting-down as well so maybe this is your problem?

Hate to say it, but now you're bios is fixed, may be easier to do a reinstall in graphical mode.

Although the way you're going is a big learning aid.

My monitor wasn't included in the list of one of the distros I installed. So I just copied the Vert & Horiz sync rates from the manual into xorg.conf. Have you got your monitor specs, can google find them for you?

no, I am just logging in at the command line, and running startx from there, because when I started into runlevel 5 I was unable to change my resolution. That's why I'm trying to figure out what I need to put in my xorg.conf file in order for x to start up properly without having to start it manually. I have a feeling that once that happens, my shutdown option will magically appear. Now its just a matter of figuring out what I need to put in the file. :P

hmm. now that I'm thinking about it, would a KVM switch affect that command getting to and from the monitor? Perhaps that is part of my issue. I might try plugging in directly to see what it can come up with, but at this point it may be easier to just create the xorg.conf file manually.

Everything is working fine for me with a Belkin KVM switch (with the occasional exeption of the mouse - that's why I use two).

Have you checked /var/log/Xorg.0.log for any signs of errors when you log in as a regular user?