When I boot into Linux, It goes alright until it starts searching for new hardware. Then it takes FOREVER. Before I used knoppix and it didnt take even half as long as this does. I have and AMD Sempron 2800+, 512 mb DDR ram, and 80 gig 7200rpm hard drive, so I'm pretty sure its not that my computers slow. Is there some way to store the hardware configuration in afile so that Mandrake doesn't have to search for new hardware every time it boots. btw, I am using LILO bootloader.

You can take the New Hardware script out of startup by loading up Mandrake Control Centre (MCC), selecting the System tab down the lefthand side and then clicking on the 'services' button on the right (the button with the big grey cog).

Once in there you can choose which services you would like to be run on boot, with harddrake being the one you want to turn off. You may find that there are some other services which you do not use which can also be stopped from running at boot, but be careful to understand what they do first, otherwise your default settings should be fine.

There are ways of configuring what runs on startup through the directories /etc/rc*.d - but then you have to worry about runlevels and startup order. The MCC GUI is probably the easiest way to go for now.

Thank you very much, that was a big helllp. Now Linux loads up fast!