Trouble Booting into Mandrake
 

I instaled Mandrake in a separate parition on my Dell Dimension 4700 with these specs:
P4 HT @ 3 Ghz
128 MB PCI EXPRESS ATI Radeon x300SE
512 MB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM
16x DVD-ROM Drive
48x CD-RW Drive
1.44 Floppy Drive
80 GB SATA hard drive (split into a 54 gig Windows XP parition and a 15 gig parition for Mandrake)
Windows XP Home with Service Pack 2

When I turn on my computer, it boots to Windows. So I tried using the boot floppy I made while I installed Mandrake and it freezes up (or takes too long for me to wait) on the first load screen. I think I may have selected a wrong option or something when I installed Mandrake.

How do I boot into Mandrake first of all? And if I need a boot floppy, where can I get one.

Oh and if nothing will work with my ATI graphics card, I have an Intel integrated Media Accelerator on my mobo I can enable and use.

Mandrake should have installed its own boot loader, lilo or grub. Mandrake would have detected windows install and would have made the option to boot to it so you must have messed up the install.

Since this is a fresh install I would just re-install and this time make sure when you get to the boot section to read what it says.

Use the first cd and at the first screen hit <Esc> or <F1> then type rescue and boot into rescue mode. There should be an option to reinstall the bootloader.

I tried reinstalling the boat loader with no avail :(. It gave me an error message and said it failed. I'm going to just try reinstalling I guess. I can reinstall on the same parition I made on my first install, right?

I reinstalled Mandrake and can now choose which OS I want at start up. However, I'm still having the same problem. Startup freezes at a little bit after 50%. I pressed Esc or some key like that and looked at the messages I was getting. Everything was labled "OK" except for Bringing up interface eth0 which said "FAILED." I think this may be because I told Linux to use KDE when I installed it but I never installed KDE. Will I have to do another reinstall?

eth0 is your network card.

I realized that few hours ago lol.

The etho isn't my problem.

I now think my problem is being caused by my ATI Radeon x300SE.

When I boot into Mandrake, I'm now getting a DOS-like screen. It asks me to type in my username and password, which does work. When I use the command xstart it says it can't load something (I can't remember what, I think it's gma) and the command x86config doesn't work at all.

so what is your problem now?

When I boot into Mandrake, I'm taken to a DOS-like screen and it looks like I can't load the desktop. I think it's related to my graphics card.

dos like as in a console ?
Has something like login: ?

Yes.

And i take it you have no idea what to do next right?

Yes. Can u help me lol?

I think I need to install some drivers. See my other thread in this forum. Or if you have another solution, please say so here!

login using the username and password you gave when you installed mandrake.

do not login as root unless you have to. you should have created a normal user account when you install mandrake unless you didnt pay attention.

after you login type 'startx' and the gui will start

startx doesn't work! I said that earler except I typed xstart in my post by mistake!

Like I said, I think the problem lies in my ATI Radeon x300SE. When I hit test under the Display menu thingy it says