Well I am a total newb. so please bear with me. I am attempting to install my video drivers on Mandriva 2005 but to do so I need to be logged in as root. So what I did was booted into failsafe mode and typed "login" at the prompt. It prompted me for a user name which I supplied as "root" and hit enter. Next it asked for a password which I entered. It stated that the information was incorrect so I tried to login with root about 4 more times. Still not Dice. So I tried one of the limited accounts I set up and guess what they worked.

To add to the confusion I am able to login as root from the X server. What am I doing wrong?

Just get a terminal window under X and
just type "su -" and then type root password to become root.

I did what you said and I was able to login but when I attempted to install the driver I get this error.

You appear to be running an X server; please exit X before
installing. For further details, please see the section INSTALLING
THE NVIDIA DRIVER in the README available on the Linux driver
download page at www.nvidia.com.

You need to shutdown the graphical user interface (GUI) to install the Nvidia drivers. For most distros you can do this by typing "init 3" (no quotes) as root on the command prompt. If you'd tell us your distro, someone here could verify that that's correct for your environment.

[edit]

Oops, you said Mandriva and I missed it. I believe "init 3" will work in Mandrive, but I don't use it personally so I'm not 100% sure. Good luck!