I have installed Mandrake 8 after a lot of difficulties with"segmentation fault" during installation.(This disappeared after I changed my RAM and reinstalled)It now starts Ok.But it has developed a shutdown problem.The screen freezes at the"current state:Halt
"stopping portmap" .

I can get no response at this point and have to power off which causes fsck to run on reboot.
I am very new to linux and would appreciate any help at solving this out.I have used search engines for similar problems but have only come up with USB related shutdown problems.

Unless your running a network server you should disable portmap. You can turn it off in the mandrake control panel.

Many thanks for yours reply Aussie,

I tried what you suggested and it has worked--somehow.
This is what happened: I went into Mand control panel and turned off portmap---at least I think I turned it off.The radiobutton equivalent in Mandrake is small square icons.It can look empty or full when clicked on--I assume it is "on" when it looks empty?Any way it was"empty" and I chnaged it to "full".
On shutting down, it froze as before but this time sooner--immediately afterclicking on shutdown!
SO I powered off and rebooted and reset portmap to the "full"apperance it the problem went away!!
I do not know how it got fixed though!! !!

BTW which is the "on" state for the button?--"full" or "empty"?
(bet that takes the prize for dumbest newbie question)

Heh,heh...there are no dumb questions merah, there are questions from dumb people some times, mostly people who are too lazy to search for an answer before they post a question thats been answered 100 times already. This is the first time I've seen a question like yours though, and the answer is that the buton is on when it's "empty".

Hold down ALT+PRINTSCREEN, and while you're holding these down, press these in the following order:

S N U B

to reboot the PC. This works on my mandrake box, as it freezes during shutdown due to some problem with usb.c.

Also, I think when you press either S or N, you'll see a list of other commands that you can do, instead of U and B. I thikn I managed to get 'O' to work, which switched my machine off.

Let me know how you get on.