I've installed Slackware 8.1 on my machine, and all runs well except for X. That is, it won't run. At the behest of my local Linux guru, I've recompiled my kernel, ran xf86config too many times to count, and I'm still having problems.

The main problem, is that I cannot start X due to video problems. I choose the most generic settings(640x480, option 1 I think it is), and the lowest sync rate. I chose the video card 'VESA compatable', but it said 'No Screens Found', and when I chose generic VGA, it said no screens could be used.

I'm not sure what I did, but somehow I got past this just a few minutes ago--to only come face to face with yet another problem. Now it's complaining of no mouse. It says 'Failed to initualize core device: mouse' and that /dev/mouse does not exist. The mouse is a Microsoft USB mouse, and I have enabled support for it when I recompiled the kernel. Any help guys?

whatever device the mouse is
make a softlink
ln -s /dev/usb??? /dev/mouse

(newb here) What device would the mouse be? This is the only USB device on the system.

Due to some freaky coincidences, the above account is useless. Seems I already had an account here. Everything directed to this user, please.

I looked around, and there is only a /dev/usb directory. Is that what you're speaking of? Inside /dev, there are cuusb0, cuusb1, and oldusbmouse. Then inside /dev/usb, there's a bunch of files, then mouse0 through mouse15-or-so.