I cannot get X-Window-Server to Start on my Debian Linux 3.0r2 for the life of me. It seems to me that it's not recognizing the video card (an ATI Radeon 9600SE). The Xfree86 Version is 4.0.1 and It won't recognize my net card (D-Link DWL-520) so I can't get it from the net. And it also for some reason doesn't put my Win-NTFS partitions in the /mnt folder. Is there any way for me to get the older version of X to recognize my card, or do I have to wait until mid-September for them the release Debian 3.1 with Xfree86 4.2 or 4.3? It does however recognize my 128MB USB mass storage device. In the end, should I wait until Debian 3.1, get Xfree onto my USB device and install the new version? And will installing and compiling Kernel 2.6 (I have 2.4-22 I think) help (Debian makes it easier using APT-Get)? Am I making any sense?

NOTE: I'm using a dual-boot machine with WinXP as the primary OS

(EDITed: 21:39 UCT, Sep 8)
(Edited: 1:02 UCT, Sep 9)

Hello, and welcome

Well, for starters, if you could post the error(s) that X gives when it fails to start, or the contents of /var/log/XFree86.*.log, it would make it easier to diagnose the problem. Even if the ATI drivers aren't up to snuff, there should at least be a way to get you going in a generic video mode of some kind.

I'm afraid I don't know as much about the network card thing. I presume you're using cable or DSL? The Ethernet howto might be a good place to start.

I'm using an old Prism2 card (D-Link DWL-520). That's a wireless LAN card.

I'll try to get the output from the log, but I'm not quite proficient in the UNIX command line, so I might have a little trouble getting it into Windows (like I said above, I can't find my drives in the /mnt/ folder) -- but I'll try to get it onto my USB mass storage device (if that shows up in the /mnt/ folder).

Speaking of which, I'm using Woody, not Sarge. Is the final release of Sarge out yet or is that only the release candidate?

I'll try to get back to you

(EDIT: 1:14 UTC, 9 Sep.)

Here's the error message when I type in 'startx' (at the end, and sans some useless lists and irrelevant user instructions):

BTW, I formatted that partition and installed mandrake 10 (a minimal installation) because Debian messed up the lilo bootloader on the MDB that mandrake put there, and I couldn't get into Windows. So, I have to reinstall that when I have some time (specifically when I'm not sniping Nazis in Medal of Honor )

And BTW, I see it's trying to load the RADEON drivers -- are there any ways to get general drivers? Also, it doesn't recognize my wlan card (as I said) and so I can't set apt-get to get unstable (newer) packages , and I don't really want to download ANOTHER 3 ISO's...