Mandrake 9.1 does not load GUI
 

well this is my first ever install of linux and i tried with so-called friendliest distro i.e. mandrake 9.1
i downloaded the 3 CD's and install goes absolutely fine. it detects all my hardware without any problems (even my printer, i was amazed to see that) and reaches to stage saying "rebooting..."
after it reboots, i chose linux from the bootloader graphics. it loads everything fine and shows every thing as "ok", till it reachers the stage to show GUI.
here the screen shows a blue background (seems to be mandrake's background), it flickers, switches off then turns on again, show the blue screen again and then switches off again. it happens 3-4 times and it seems as though it is trying to load the GUI, but it fails to do so. so it reaches the CUI automatically and i login as root.
i try to return to GUI by pressing Alt+F7 but nothing happens and i just see a cursor blinking at top of the screen.
i don't know what is happening. :(
i have tried 3 installs just to see whether it works but it does not.

i have P4 1.6 GHz, 256MB RAM, 2x40Gig.
I have Windows XP as my primary OS on my master HD (2 partitions, NTFS) while i tried to install Mandrake 9.1 on my slave.
I partitioned my slave HD as 22% ext3, 3% swap and 75% FAT32. i tried one install without swap and one install without any partitions except ext3.

you can easily see that i m an absolute newbie as far as linux is concerned, so please don't blast me if i ask some very silly questions. any help will be highly appreciated. TIA :(

What is happening is this - your X windows configuration is incorrect. The most likely problem is your graphics card. Did you test out the configuration during install?
Now you need to tell us the exact type of video card you have. Then you will need to boot until you get the cursor, and then log in as root. Then you run the command XFdrake, and choose your driver from the list of cards.

thanx a lot for the reply.

i did not test the configuration of my graphics card during install but it said that my graphics card is sis 300/305 which is correct.
i thought that may be that is how it is done.
now how i should go ahead?

1. login under CUI as root and then type XFdrake
2. chose the graphics card driver from the list.

thanx once again for a quick reply.