A question to the collective minds of this forum!
My computer freezes and stalls during boot up when mandrake tries to initialize the "ppp0 interface." I have Mandrake 10.1 Official (download). My modem is a Cendyne external 56K modem that has worked with other Linux distros perfectly. It will boot just fine if I have the modem turned "off" during boot up.
Any ideas? Thanks!

Are you able to work with the modem if you turn it on after booting??

Yes I am. In addition, I (since the post) changed my BIOS settings so it now boots into mandrake even with the modem on. However, every time I boot, it dials the modem and displays an error message. Something about "Error 8." This is just weird stuff if you ask me. Thanks for your reply.

ok, well I have searched the web and found something that could be kind of basic but reading wouldn't harm:
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Modem-HOWTO-2.html
it talks about types of modems, which should work under linux and which souldnt.
And here:
http://www.aboutdebian.com/modems.htm
is a tutorial con configuring/setting a dial-up modem. I think this should help you more than the first one.
Also it has just occured to me that perhaps the modem is not available at booting time (I could be wrong so please remember this is just an idea) or needs a script of some sort to get ready, perhaps it even doesnt need to be initialized and an extra step is taking place..

Go into the MCC and set your PPP interface to NOT start on boot.

You can bring it up manually (ifup ppp0) or add the /sbin/ifup ppp0 command to anything...

e.g. gkrellm, as I do for my WiFi links...

Looks like you guys were right. I got it to work great!.

Thanks for your help.