horray for first posts! anyhow, i have a quick question/problem. Ok, earlier this week i installed mandrake 9.1 on my Windows XP machine. I installed on a partiton on my second hard drive which windows is not installed on. I am loving mandrake, but ever since installing i seem to having problems with windows. Whenever i boot into windows my USB microsoft (go figure) mouse will not work. the first time this happened was today, and most of my USB devices wouldnt work. tried rebooting a bunch but no luck. also tried reinstalling my motherboard drivers, but couldnt cause i couldnt access the install with my keyboard . anyways, if you guys have any ideas on why this is happening that would be awesome.
one last thing, i am trying to install netcat on my comp, but just cant figure it out. any help with this would be welcome also . thanks.
Cop

I sincerely doubt mandrake had any effect on your windows installation. That would imply that mandrake was aware of windows and was able to make 'adjustments', but this is not the case.

I could be wrong however, but I doubt it . Have a good think about anything else you did / installed on your windows partition.I think the answer lies elsewhere.

Regards,
unholy

I agree with Unholy. As well as the advice above, I would try the mouse and other usb peripherals on another pc. It could be that your usb ports have died or that something is disconnected. Crack open your case and check the connections.

hmmm, i am now in XP with my mouse working. this is odd, because last night i logged off linux, booted up windows XP and the mouse didnt work. hmm indeed. also, this is a total n00b question, but is there a command to shut down the comp in mandrake? not just to log off but to shut down? i feel like an idiot not being able to find just that ah well, thanks for the answers and help guys.

Open a Terminal and "su -"
Type in root password
type "shutdown -h now" or "shutdown -r now"

-h means halt, as in shutdown in windows
-r means restart
when you "su -" you give yourself superuser or root control

Type "man shutdown" in a terminal for more options

michael