Finally got tired of trying to load Mandrake 10, Fedora 3, would not work on my laptop or desktop. tried Conectiva and loved it but would not mnt my win me partition. I am a lazy newbe and will try to figure things out but would rather surf. Found Mepis (simply and pro beta 4) tried them both, but no sound. ES1879 not supported.
Finally tried Mepis 3.3 and no problems. I have a Compaq Armanda 7800 P11
S3Virge MX and 3 com 574 either. I opted for the 2.6 kernel to be loaded only rather then both. Everything was found and worked perfect except the sound card but knew that would happen. Thankfully Mepis has alsa conf right on the start menu and figured my card in no time.(good for lazy newbies). So with a perfectly working older laptop what is my dilema? Every night I shut down and make sure the computer shuts off then close the lid. Every morning I get up and the computer is on. Lid up or down the machine starts itself. I'm only worried because if I happen to be somewhere and forget to pull the battery it will kill it on me. Anyone else?

What do you mean, the machine starts itself? It can't. It's either some sort of a timer or it just went into standby mode... How do you check that it is really OFF?

Honestly, I log out, I click on shut down, I watch it go through the shut down process and everything shuts off. All lights go out everything is the same as if I shut down in win me. I get up in the morning and it has started itself to the point where I just have to log in since mepis is the default to start. I think it does it at the same time every night which would have to be after 12:00 am (when I'm trying to get some much needed beauty sleep). Remember I'm stupid and lazy so is there someplace to see if a timer is set or what time it starts up? I never had this with prior versions of mepis loaded on this machine.

In linux the command uptime shows the time the computer is up wtihout rebooting. So this should give you some clues. login and run uptime, and you will see when it turned on. Try this a couple of days in a row to see if it looks like some sort of a pattern. Post your conclusions here to get more help.

It could be something in the BIOS. I mean, as long as I keep the power on the system after shutting it down (and pressing that power button so it IS off), all I have to do is punch a key to start it up again.

Sorry, have really been busy and havn't had time to respond. The computer actually turns itself on at 12:00am every night. Tried the up-time but that only shows the time I actually log on not the time the computer starts up. Got into the habit of taking the battery out so in case i forget to plug it in it won't kill it.

My bois (setup) runs from floppy it is not actually loaded on the harddrive. If I need to make any changes to it I restart with the floppy in, make the changes and restart after I am done. As far as I can see there is nothing there about automatic startups. In fact I have never seen that on any computer bois I have looked at. Is there such an animal?

In my BIOS it's something with starting the system on a key press. See if that is there for you

You may access your BIOS setup using a floppy, but it isn't "run" from the floppy. Without a BIOS your machine would just sit there and stare blankly at you.

I understand you're new but you really should take the time to not be so lazy (your word, not mine) and learn something about how your machine actually works. It would make problem solving much easier.

The command uptime shows the time the machine has been running at one time. How do you know it turns on at 12:00 am? There must be something programmed into your BIOS instructing your machine to activate at that time if that's what it' doing. A computer only carries out the instructions given to it.

I'd suggest using that floppy to access your BIOS settings and poke around a bit to find what's causing it.

That's what I meant to say, I access my bios from the floppy. Until I loaded Mepis 3.3 I never had this problem. I had Conectiva loaded for a month and the computer never started on it's own. Also had Mepis 2004-6 and Mepis pro beta and the computer never started by itself. Win me has always been on I have just changed flavors of linux, sampling them to see which i prefer. I know the computer starts at 12 am as I left shortly before 12, the computer was off and returned shortly after and it was on and loaded to the log in stage. The usual thing. Nothing in my bios was changed prior to loading the different flavors of linux.

Well that's pretty strange. There's nothing in Mepis itself that would cause your machine to boot itself up from a full shutdown state. There must be some little detail being overlooked here but I can't imagine what it could be based on what you've said.

Maybe you do have a haunted laptop. LOL