I have an old thinkpad 600e with a history of hardware problems, a half damaged system board and a trackpoint problem. nevertheless it worked, until it had a software problem and needed a reformat. (it was running windows 98se) not wanting to buy a new os, i decided to install mandrake linux 10.0, and i downloaded the cd images, and burned them. This laptop plain and simple does NOT boot from the cdrom drive, it also has no floppy drive, meaning the only way to boot is from the hard drive. i got a hard drive adapter to put the 2.5 inch drive into an old dell desktop that has the same proccesor type. (pentium II). i put it in as a single master drive. booted, installed mandrake. restarted, ran the os for a couple minutes on there, then moved the hard drive back to the laptop.

I started up the laptop, and i see the normal mandrake booting screens, it then goes into verbose mode, tells me i removed some hardware, "would you like to configure" and also tells me that i added some hardware which is normal. it continues to boot and then it finaly boots in (i dont know exactly what you call it, i'm a windows geek) that "console" mode. it gives me the text to log in, so i tried loging in as "root" and as "owner" (i created a user called owner at installation) then i'm loged in in that mode.

how do i switch to the gui mode, when i installed the os, i told it to install KDE, and told it to start up with KDE. but it doesnt, on a restart, it shows me the gui boot screen with blue background and moving bar, but it eventually goes into the console mode.

i tried typeing "kde" and i get the following:

a whole page of text including the text "(EE) No devices detected." and "Fatal server error: no screens found" it has other text saying to report the crash, and that the log file is stored in "/var/log/XFree86.0.log" and then it gives me the prompt again to do something.

it would be awesome if any of you could help me get it to start up with KDE. keep in mind i cannot boot from cd, but i can put the hard drive in another computer if i need to install the os again or do something different

thank you for reading

-Thebinaryman

Did you try "startx" without quotes?

Turns out I went back to win98. I was fixing this laptop for my mom and windows would be more user friendly for her. I was able to get windows 98 on there by pulling out the hard drive from the dell when it asks you to restart half way through setup, before it starts to config hardware, but after the main system files are installed. everything worked fine. thats the one thing I like about windows. I think i will put slack on the next computer i come across though.

Thank you for your help anyway.

-Thebinaryman