I have installed mandrake 10 on my HP laptop and it works fine --- except for when it comes to logging out of KDE. Darkness comes to my screen. The same thing happens when I try to get a console using Ctrl+Alt+1....etc. Just a black screen. Any ideas?
Thanks

Have you updated your video drivers?

Are you able to start up Mandrake with a text screen? I can't remember which option, but the "dual boot" screen before you load should let you boot into text mode only. Otherwise, you might want to try the command "telinit 3" (multi-user text mode) or "telinit 1" (single-user mode, as a last resort).

(Can someone remind us what the LILO boot option is to get to text mode? Can you enter something like "runlevel=3" at the LILO prompt?)

Once in text mode, you can always start up the GUI with the "startx" command.

Also, you might want to try booting Knoppix to see if you get the same problem. I know at least one laptop at home here has that problem. Anyway, do let us know.

I get the same problem with Mnadrake 10 OE on my Dell Latitude C600. The screeen does work well with knoppix 3.3 and 3.4 tough.

Thanks for the replies ---- the problem is solved now. I'd gone with the default Mandrake video driver settings but these clearly didn't do all they were supposed to do. A little experimentation later and I now have a fully working screen (s) I changed the video driver and the refresh rates to get the results I needed. Let's see if Mandrake 10 performs better on my laptop than it did on my desktop the first time I installed it there. Perhaps I was expecting Mandrake to fail??

Glad you got it working. So ... what driver did you use? What video settings? What type of HP laptop do you have? Post it here so that other hapless newbies can find some answers to their questions, man! This will show up on Google, and it's how half the Linux users get answers to their questions. Spill!

Hacker Ethic #2: No problem should ever have to be solved again once it has been solved the first time.