First let me say that Mepis is amazing, I've tried nearly 3/4 of all the available distro's and for what I need, this is a well put together package!

Now, for what doesn't go right:

-when loading from a cold boot, at least 50% of the time th normal loading dialogue continues smoothly until the point where normally I get the following:

starting K Display Manager: kdm
Mepis Linux testing/unstable ANDRESS tty1 (the cap's are my domian name)

then the screen (on a good boot) would go black, followed by a grey thatched screen and the the KDE login screen shows up.

In the not-so-good situations, I do no get the black screen, or if anything, just a quick flicker, then its back to the boot screen with

ANDRESS login:

if I log in here I am in a full screen terminal mode. If I reboot using the startup CD and login under ROOT and reload the GRUB (on MBR) and reboot again all will be fine, until 1 or 2 system starts have passed and then the whole thing starts again.

What am I messing up?

The other one is the ongoing relationship I am having with ALSA, which is becoming a closer one than I have with my own spouse!

ALSA always returns to using the systems (IBM NEtVista A40, P3) onboard sound card and not the installed card. Each time I go through Terminal, root user, alsaconf - set up the proper card, alsaconf store and then exit - the card works flaaawlessly, but on reboot, we're back to the old card again.

I'm fond of ALSA, but really don't wish to spend that much time with her - HELP!!!

When X doesn't want to initialize, then in my case it is usually a driver problem, e.g. the kernel i'm using doesn't have the fglrx modules, but they are set in Xfree86 config files. Check your log files (/var/log/XFree86.1.log, or was it .0.log). If it says "no screens" then it is most likely a driver problem.

The KDM not showing up issue is a known bug It happens if you have a different locale setting.

As root, run: dpkg-reconfigure locales

Accept all defaults and let it crunch away.... Hope this will do the trick.

About ALSA detecting the onboard sound. I guess this is because you have not disabled it in the BIOS. So, at startup, press DEL or whatever to do a BIOS setup, and disable the onboard sound.

Hope that works

Thanks for the help - the Rebuilding seems to have done it - keeping m fingers crosssed....and I'm just resigned to my ever evolving affair with ALSA!