linux_challenged

I need some help tracking down the cause and fix for no sound in Mandriva 2010.2. I am using gnome desktop and have lost all sound. Nothing from any players, firefox flash, youtube, nothing. I have tried disabling pulseaudio, that did nothing. I should mention that this has been an issue for a couple of months, I suppose after I took some updates, but I can't be sure. I used to have sound when I first upgrade from 2009.1 to 2010.1, but now I don't even have the startup sound or shutdown sound. How can I figure out what the problem is? thanx in advance...

I ran the powertop command and it came back with several suggestions - can I cut and paste the commands from the list into a terminal window? I have read several online articles but no indications of how to physically apply the suggestions. Cut and paste is more accurate for me :D I also went into MCC and checked that I didn't have anything running that isn't needed, so I am hoping the powertop suggestions help. I am also going to physically monitor the battery life as was suggested by tux99...

I haven't used the laptop under battery power until it actually dies but I am wondering if it will actually die or keep running until the battery is truly out of juice... I will try it tonite or tomorrow and post back with the results... thanx for your help!!!

@tux99 thanx for your reply... following is the output for the three commands - they are in the order you indicated... 1733000 1333000 1067000 800000 acpi-cpufreq ondemand Please tell me what these responses are indicating - I am still in the learning curve phase with linux thanx again

Hi all... I just purchased a long life battery for my dell i6400 lappie and have a question. I am dual booting xp pro and mandriva 2008.1 on this puter and there is a discrepancy regarding how much time is left under battery power. The windows side shows twice as much time left as the mandriva side. Is there a setting I need to adjust so that the time left is maximized? I don't want to have to switch back to the dark side just because of a faulty power indicator... thanx in advance

Final update for this thread: Wireless up and running perfectly (looks around for some wood to knock on :unsure: ATI Vid card up and running perfectly - I now have Metisse working again !!! Many thanx to all for your help and comments - I have truly learned much from where I started

Okay, I took your advice and installed Mandriva straightaway - only a couple issues to resolve now. Can you point me to instructions for getting my Intel 3945 wireless card to connect, and I need some help getting a driver installed for the ATI X1400 vid card. Both seem to be recognized in the hardware list but the wireless won't connect and I can't set any 3D desktop effects - I like the Metisse desktop but the wizard says my hardware doesn't support 3d. BTW, everything was working before I had the earlier problem. I just lost my links, instructions.

Okay, I ran the hard drive utility from the manufacturer as suggested and the hard drive passed, so it is possible that the error occured between my chair and the keyboard At any rate, all is well now and I am going ahead with the reinstall of Mandriva. I will be following the tutorial by falko timme that I found. I am not sure about the whether I will go with Gnome or KDE as I had problems with KDE before but that was with the 2008 One version and I will be installing the Free version per the tutorial. I suppose I should be posting on the software forum as this problem has been solved... thanx to all :)

When I booted the gparted live cd, the gui wouldn't open. Instead I got a message that said to start a "Forcevideo" script - I have no idea what that is or how to do that. Also, not sure that it was a hardware issue with the hard drive. At any rate, xp is running fine and I intend to reinstall Mandriva this evening possibly. I will however get the hard drive utility, if I can, and see what that says before I do anything else. mucho thanx for all the tips, etc.... I will keep you posted.

Nope, it wasn't a Partition Magic problem and the hard drive is fine. Something (I am not sure what) got too corrupted to allow access. At any rate, I wiped the hard drive clean and reinstalled xp. I have made sure it is all running okay. Now I want to reinstall Mandriva but would like some suggestion of how to partition the hard drive in advance. My other installation pretty much went with the installation defaults as far as how to partition the hard drive. This time around I thought I might solicit a better plan, if one exists. The one difference I intend to make this time is to set up a fat32 partition that I can use to share between windows and linux. Any suggestions? TIA...

I finally got Mandriva 2008 Free running okay after fighting with 2008 One for a couple weeks on my Dell e1505 laptop - worked great for about 3 days. When I came home after a short weekend trip and started up the laptop, I got "GRUB Error 5". From what I can determine, that is a partition problem, but I don't understand how it could occur when all was fine on Friday morning and nothing done since then. I tried to boot from a GRUB live cd and also gparted but couldn't get the interface to come up. I did get a message that said to start a "Forcevideo" script - I have no idea what that is or how to do that. Can anyone point me in the right direction to resolve this? How can I troubleshoot or recover the boot menu to figure out what the issue is? I am running dual boot xp pro and mandriva 2008 free with gnome desktop. thanx in advance [moved from Software by spinynorman]

I am running KDE which was what I selected at installation. Also, I am using the KDM display manager - I checked that to verify. The only other option for display manager is XDM - should there be others? I am using the Metisse option for 3d effects. I am also using the Mandriva menu. Aside from selecting Metisse, which was familiar to me from the 2007 Spring Discovery (my first exposure to Mandriva) everything else was set up by default during the installation process, after selecting the KDE desktop option. I have not even progressed to the point of trying any custom stuff or much command line interaction. This is why it is so frustrating to me. I would think that new users could expect to have basic functions like logging in and logging out to work right out of the box, so to speak. Hardware configuration,setting up the packages, etc, one could expect to have to do some fiddling around. I understand that. I have openSUSE installed on and booting from a usb hard drive which I connect up to the same laptop when I want. I am also running KDE on it, and, aside from a wireless connection problem, it runs flawlessly. I don't understand what the difference is. What is the real difference between distros? One thing I did notice when comparing the menu.lst files is an entry on the lines "showopts" that is missing from the Mandriva menu.lst - do you suppose that could be the issue? Isn't the menu.lst created automatically during installation? I am considering trying an install of the "free" version of Mandriva 2008. I found a discussion about the "perfect desktop" and think it might be my last try at this. I have even tried a reinstall of Mandy One 2008, thinking that might fix the problem. No luck there either. I guess I am kind of unwilling to give up on Mandriva, mostly because of the "curb appeal" which was what lead me to try it out. As I am running it in a dual boot setup, it would be nice to have the logout options working so that I can switch back and forth when I need to. At least until I can become more confident with linux - then I will ditch windows. I have wondered if I tried a GNOME installation if that would fix the problem...

thanx for your response... Your suggestion did not work but I noticed while looking at the path (/home/username/.kde) that there is also a kde file located at /home/username/documents/kde-me. I wonder if the two are conflicting. Also, when I renamed .kde to .kdeold, a new one was created immediately. I would think the new one would be generated at my next login. I am really at a loss how to fix this. Even though it is a small problem, it is kind of a hassle to power off and power back up. I am running mandriva in a dual boot with xp and sometimes I need to go back to the xp side. I have even tried running the live cd version and the problem exists there as well.

I am having a problem with the KDM Session Manager not showing shutdown options when I log out. I get as far as the box that allows me to "End the current session" but, where I would expect to see a menu come up with the shutdown options the system waits for a bit with the spinning icon and then a black screen pops up with a stationary cursor. Does anyone know what would cause this and how to fix it? thanx in advance