Well, just for kicks, and for curiosity sake, and the fact that I am a Masochist, I wiped 2008 RC1, and installed 2007.1, disabled beagle, removed beagle, disabled unnecessary services, processes, done all the updates, rebooted, and it's exactly the same as 2007 and 2007.1 has always been for me, exactly the same as 2008 RC1 is, slooooow, and unresponsive, so then just for kicks, and because I had a bit of spare time, I wiped 2007.1, and installed Ubuntu, it is fast and smooth, so I still had a few kicks left in me, a bit more time to blow, so I thought I would install a KDE orientated distro, enter Kubuntu, yep, you guessed it, fast and smooth, a quick look at the old kick meter showed I still had a bit of kick left in me, and time was still on my side, so I thought I would even things out, and try another .rpm based distro, enter PCLinuxOS, yep, fast and smooth.
So I don't know what it is, but Mandriva just doesn't like me, on 2 different PC's it does exactly the same thing, as said before I have downloaded the 2007 and 2007.1 PowerPack, 2007 and 2007.1 Free DVD, and the One cds, all more than once, and each time the md5's, the burn, the verification after the burn all say it's good, so to me that rules out bad download/media, same goes for 2008 RC1, but of course that is cooker, so . . . , but . . .,
With the old kick meter now showing empty, and time running out, I just can't waste anymore time on this, I have reclaimed my HD space for Debian, and unfortunately said my farewells to Mandriva, Introducing all my Mandriva DVD's, and CD's to the hard sharp reality of the corner of my table (there's definitely a media problem now). I still find it strange how every other distro I have tried runs fine, but Mandriva not so, oh well, time to move forward and not look back.
adamw, sorry, I never got to try that, even though I understand where you are coming from, the thought of just pokeing around at the console a bit never really inspired me :)
Thanks to all who looked in, and gave advice/suggestions.
[unsolved] pending release and installation of Mandriva 2008