you can always use the 'vesa' setting since thats generic.

I am not sure what your doing on your end since your not detailing what you are or have done.

Remember we cant see whats being done - only you do.

I'm sorry .

I installed Mandrake 10.1 and I start it up, I am not taken to the desktop. I am taken to a console screen where I'm asked for a username and password.

try:
Your error could well be related to a video problem (or it might not be). Usually most distro's don't have any trouble with doing generic desktop stuff. It's when you want to do 3D applications that modules (drivers) become important.

At any rate, you may want to compare what you find to the contents of /etc/X11/XF86Config (case sensitive). This is X windows configuration file, and it does have "device" options.

I can't actually view the file for some reason. Do I have to typei in view and the file name? I did something like that just to see what would happen and I got a list of directories (I've been trying to get Mandrake to work all day).

I thought it would be useful to tell you the error messages I've been getting when I run startx.

Some other code stuff
I also got this, but I think it has to do with my network card or something so I didn't write down the whole message:
If this is important, say so and I'll go back into Mandrake and write down the rest of the message.

At the end I got this message again except only once:
I hope this helps. I'm sorry . I should've posted this in the first place. I think if we go back to step 1 where I got these error messages things might be easier.

Thanks everyone for all the help you've been giving me and I hope I'm not getting annoying!

I'm a

Oh ya and the newbie's going to sleep now so you won't see him until tomorrow morning, probably around 10 AM. But feel free to post any suggestions and stuff in the meantime.

Just remove the .Xauthority file from your home directory, X will create a new one.

After you login type su then root password then DrakConf.

Because you are brand new, I'll expand on what /bin/bash has told you.
suggests you have a permissions problem at moment.
so here is a step by step of what you need to do

No luck sorry.

I did what you said and I'm still getting the same errors.

I have Fedora ready to be burned onto a CD right now. Do you think it might be easier just to install that? I really don't care what distro I use as long as it's newb-friendly.

Or do you have another fix in mind for my problem?

Thanks everyone for all the help you've been giving me!

FC is beta and is not supported at all by RH -- They even tell you this before you download FC2-3

Can you startx as root then?

No. I cannot start starx as root.

Did you run DrakConf?
/usr/X11R6/bin/DrakConf

I installed Fedora 3 and it is up and running. I nolonger need help with Mandrake but thanks anyway! I really appreciate everyone's help!