Why is my desktop all cluttered and messed up upon a fresh install?

See here: http://home.bredband.no/pauner/linux/snapshot1.jpg

It seems like there are too little memory for the graphics card or something.



Details:
It's MDK 8 or something (how do I check??)
The graphics card/display controller is listed as:
Bus 0, device 9, function 0:
Display controller: Texas Instrumenst TVP4020 Permedia 2
Medium devsel. Fast back-to-back capable. bla. bla....
Non-prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xfede0000
Non-prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xfd800000
Non-prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xfe000000

Edit: wrong url, convert to jpg

PNF I'm afraid.

Do you mean it is very large (to low a screen resolution)?

What's PNF? (png? i will try to convert to jpg)

The problem is not large or small. The graphics is all garbled and messed up.

PNF= Page Not Found (It doesn't exist on your server- at least not at that location)

sorry, was wrong URL. Now corrected.

You should remember which distro version you installed. If it's Mandrake, it should say which when you load the Mandrake Control Centre

I had a similar problem ages ago when my voodoo3 3000 gave up the ghost. Can you check the card and monitor with another OS? How does it look at boot?

Control Center gives me
KDE version 2.0
Release: 2.2.17-21mdksecur
Machine i686

Neither the monitor nor the card gave me any problems in win2000 when I had that installed.
Now it's Linux only, so I can't check.

My guess would be the refresh rate in:
/etc/X11/XF86Config

Check that they are set to the manufacturers specification.

Not the KDE Control Centre, the MCC.

I second the refresh/X monitor settings actually

I cheked the specs.

And it's MDK 7.2

When booting, the machine stated
3Dlabs Permedia something

That's funny, b/c when I run DrakConf, it states in XDrake that I have a ELSA Gloria Synergy and that I run at 640x400, which I don't.

And btw, I guess you by now have figured out that I am somewhat of a newbie...

Now, If I only could find MCC....

If you can find the thing on your desktop or in your menues...you're not logging in as root are you?...then as a last resort run mcc at a terminal

mcc at terminal is not a command.

I run as root, yes. Then I get all access. Is that bad?

Maybe MCC is called DrakConf in this older version of MDK (7.2)?

Btw. I think the Monitor is running at 1024x768 at 70 Hz.
Not sure at all what the card is doing...
Have been checking XF86Config.

Yes it's very bad to log in as root all the time, expecially with a gui and being a newbie. You have more power that you need, you're expected to know what you're doing by the system, and anything run by you gets your unlimited access too.

DrakConf seems to be MCC

Actually, I'd look more under the following topics:
* Does your graphics card have enough ram to actually display the resolution you have choosen?
* There might have been a problem with bith depths on your card.
the background and next to everything might want to be displayed in 24-bit, but the display is in 16? or vis-a-vis...
** The key clue here is that your Icons are alive and kicking and even have the transparencies around them..
... can't help much since have no exp with other distros - if you weren't a newbie maybe...

Yes.
That is my feeling as well. There being something with the bit depth and the amount of ram. B/C sometimes, the desktop is rendered just fine, and there are problems with displaying menus and ads in the browser.

I will try to provide a picture of this.