I finally got a friend to try Mandrake. When he boots Mandrake it opens the Shell, tried startx and startkde but it says can't connect to x server. What are some possible causes and fixes for this. Thanks.

If it boots into the shell, that means it probably using runtime 3. You need to use runtime 5.

If this is all greek to you then I'll try and explain a little bit, but I'm using a Windows machine right now and I don't have access to a Linux box at the moment...

It's in /etc/inittab. If you edit this file, you should see a place where it indicates the default runlevel (It's usually well-commented in this file). It should look something like this:

You should be able to just change the 3 to a 5 and reboot.

As far as X not starting up, that could be because you need to start the comp in runlevel 5 (so it loads necessary modules and whatnot). If that doesn't work, then I'll need the tail end of the of the X log file (/var/log/Xorg.log or something like that). Sorry for not being very specific at the moment. I just can't remember all the details off the top of my head

-- the dudeman

This will also happen if the video card drivers are incorrect for the card iin use.

Sounds like the x windows system isn't set up correctly, due to either the wrong video driver being selected or a bad monitor selection. The startx command will change from init 3 to init 5.

As root, you can run the setup program as root: XFdrake.

If you can't select the proper video driver, select the 'vesa' driver. Then make sure the monitor settings are correct. The vesa driver is a generic nonaccelerated driver that most cards can use.

If the vesa driver works, then you need to supply more information about your video card and the /etc/XF86config settings before we can help.