I just noticed that there's a link in the home dir called guest that points to my home dir... is that needed in mandriva? i've tried a few other linux distros and never saw that before....

If you don't need it, simply delete it. Alternatively, disable the guest account so that it cannot be used. This is better for security point of view.

yeah. that's the interesting thing though. I've got no guest account enabled. in mcc, if i go to the user management and view the system users, there's a bunch of system accounts, some user accounts, but no guest account.
According to the permissions shown on the link, it says i am the owner, i tried deleting it but it won't let me! I can't delete a link which says i own it without being root?

Anyway I did delete it, but better yet I still want to know how that link was created in the first place!

My guess is that some unofficial non-Mandriva package that you have installed created that directory... probably some user "guest" as well, but you should check that yourself.

Sounds like it could be a leftover from a "One" installation - in the live version the default user is guest.
But then again, I installed my system from One and I certainly don't have a /home/guest.
Without knowing the history of your system (or even what your system is), it's a bit difficult to tell where it came from. But you sure don't need it.