i am having the weirdest problem. I'm not sure it's a real newbie problem, but I'm a noob, so here goes.

I've just installed PCLinuxOS 2007. I'm finding that many settings I change are not retained if hte system is shut down or rebooted. Each time I boot up, I have to reconfigure my internet connection, mount points, and anything that I've specified to have automatically done at boot does not happen.

I suspect that there may be a problem with my home folder, thinking that this would be where such settings might be written? On the other hand, I can read and write in my home without error, and the permissions on it look fine...

If anyone has any ideas on this, I'd love to hear them.
Thanks all

How are you making these changes? i.e. through a kde interface? editing text files (which files)?

well no, these changes are not stored in the home folder....ie /etc/networks is the network file in this distro that i'm using, and most i use have the network config in this place, /etc/fstab is where the info used for mounting devices is stored ...
if your using the wizards then they make the changes to these files in those locations...like mouse info is stored in /dev directory, but you alter the mouse effects via a wizard under kde/gnome or another desktop wizard....

the main thing about changes not being stored maybe that your only changing things as a regular user and not as root, if this is the case then i think you need to do some research into what your changing and ensure it is changed as root and stored...i make major changes to these types of configuration files using vi(now called vim) and do a write once done, i also do this under su(root user) and then the changes are permanent...and yes sometimes i make major mistakes when i try to do things that are destructive, so be careful and do read, there are man pages for most things in linux, and these do show what can be changed and syntax info too...

It looks as if the problem was caused by a bit of strange behaviour in teh PCLinuxOS control centre thing, which a user on the PCLinuxOS forum pointed out to me. So for now, I htink I've got it licked. Thanks anyway for the replies.