here on mandrake 9.2, grub bootloader, pentium 1.7, dualboot with winXP.
hmmm, not much else i can explain really... i chose linux-nonfb from grub since "linux" always gave me a black screen and stops.
only one process failed to run, which is mailman. (whatever it is) then devfs got an [OK}, then wine....i never got to see what it got. right after the message about starting wine i get thrown to a pure console, no X. i had to "startx" myself. it wasn't like this before. what should i do? thanks!

EDIT: i tried interactive startup, and skipped wine, but the same thing still happened.

Look at the file '/etc/inittab. Do you see a line: 'id:5:initdefault:' [no quotes]?

Or does the line look like: 'id:3:initdefault:' [no quotes]?

If you see the second line, [As root] change the 3 to a 5.

This will tell linux to start the GUI

HTH,

MY GOODNESS!
the first reply is after 3 minutes (i think) of waiting and it hit right on the spot and it worked! i haven't seen such help for years.
thank you, thank you, thank you ernie.
i wanna be a great helper too someday ^_^
thank you again!