I installed Mandrake 9.2 off a DVD i got and it all worked fine
When i got to the final stage i rebooted and when the bootloader came up i selected linux, it then had a progressbar and about 3/4 of the way accross the screen went black
i restarted and tried again...this time it went into what looked similar to a windows bios and after about 1 minuit with things flicking down the screen it went black again.
It was not a black like the screen had turned off but a lighter shade of black as if the gui had not been configured or something like that. I reinstalled and when i got to the summary configuration page and looked at the display and graphics settings i ran a test and found that there was a problem...all the settings i changed made no difference
My system is:
P4 2.4
Geforce 4 Ti 4200
512 ram
running windows XP and mandrake 9.2 (trying)
Any help would be much appreciated
Thanks
Tom

also i forgot to add the monitor is a dell 1702FP plug and play

Try hitting <ctrl>+<alt>+<backspace>. This key sequence will kill the gui and bring you back to a terminal. Then, try reading the error messages that should have formed.

i did that and i logged in with username and password, then typed startx
it went black again so i did ctrl alt backspace again anf there was an error message, lots of writing and at the end it said
xinit: connection to X server lost.
i am using XFree86 version 4.3.0 atm
i am still confused :s
so any more help would be much apreciated
thanks for your help so far
Tom

Ok. Now, type . After the screen goes black, go into your home directory and there should be a file named errors.txt . Post the entire file.

its alright m8...in the end i just gave up and installed slack 10, thanks for your help anyway