I make a new user in mandrake control center, give it a password etc, etc. then when you try to login as the user, the screen flickers and bringme back to the default kde login screen!

I'm not much on those Control Center gui things. I prefer to be the control center myself.

Perhaps you could try opening a terminal and logging in as root, then issue
"adduser username" and following the instructions. If you do this, I think that
user will stay with you.

Have you downloaded all the updates? this may fix the problem if you havn`t.

Cheers

Having added the user, do they have a /home directory entry? If they do, then likely the control center is running the useradd command correctly (I've had no real issue with it under 9.2, anyway), and might be related to needing an update for some other piece of MDK to handle the "first time login" actions for a new user. (I believe 9.2 had this issue out-of-the-box, but an update did alleviate the problem.)

Can you also switch to a virtual terminal (i.e., use ctrl-alt-f2) and login that way as one of the new users? Great thing to check. (use ctrl-alt-f7 to get back to the normal X session, btw).

When I set up a new user I always use Webmin. It take care of ALL requirement in creating a new user where as the MCC dosn't.