how come my mandriva 2007 Free edition can't restart, logout or shutdown? Everything works perfectly when i'm logon, but the minor problem is when i logoff/restart/reboot all i see is the half black & yellow screen and it freezes. So i have to press the 'reset' button. Anyone out there knows the problem and help me to fix the it. Thank you.

all i see is the half black & yellow screen and it freezes.
I have no idea, but it looks like its trying to unload something it can't and then gets stuck.
- Did this behaviour happen right after you installed the O.S. or did it start ocurring later on?
- What desktop environment do you use (Gnome, KDE, other)?
- Is all software updated?


So i have to press the 'reset' button.
Which is a bad thing most of the time because you kill updating of the filesystem which could lead to corruption.


First thing would be to look at the logs. Logs that are written to by the system are in /etc/syslog.conf, default should be /var/log/messages. Logs that are written to by X are somewhere /var/log/XFree* or Xorg*. Look for anything that looks like an error at the time you tried to reboot. If it doesn't show a thing then:
- Does first logging out, then rebooting work?
- Does logging out, then logging in as root in terminal 1 (CTRL+ALT+F1) and then issuing "/sbin/shutdown -r now" work?
- Does logging out, then logging in as root in terminal 1 (CTRL+ALT+F1) and then issuing "telinit 1" and *then* doing "/sbin/shutdown -r now" work?

Try to shutdown from a terminal. In a console, type "poweroff" and see if the hang happens. If it does not, then I would suspect your desktop environment. Also, try creating a new user and see if that user has the same issue. If not, the personal settings become suspect.

it happened since 1rst time logon (either with root or user accounts) and i haved tried to reinstall (either with fresh and upgrade for several times) but still got the same problem. So i don't know what to do. i might consider to install another linux distro. It seems to me that "Linux and Unix" are against me some how. I have tried to install (Solaris = not successful coz hard drives disapeared or unable to see, Ubuntu = GRUB error problem & can't boot, Fedora is ok but no net (wireless problem and i downloaded the driver for it but it seems to me a problem brings me a new problem). Poor Me !!!!

You have not mentioned what your video card is, that could be the problem. Also, the window manager may be the culprit, I assume you are using the default KDE... have you run any updates? 2007 is notoriously buggy out of the box, and requires numerous updates to get stabilized.

But 9 times out of 10, when I have seen any bizarre behavior as you describe, it has been a result of bad video drivers. Try the "x.org" driver for your card if you have not already done so.