Ixthusdan

The new graphics are great and the installation is an improvement for attracting windows users.

The 945 is the Intel northbridge, or the chip set name. Your video section is an Intel i810. I have read that you need the latest i810 driver, which is stock with Mandriva. Perhaps your attempted screen resolution is the problem rather than the driver?

What, did Gates decide not to pay them or something? B)

Is the modem acting as a dhcp server or is the ip static? Cable and dsl modems frequently use the port's hardware address to allow hook up. (It is why routers have a "clone address" option.) If this is the case, you could release the ip while in windows, then leave windows and gain access again in Linux. In windows, you could type "ipconfig /all" at the command line and duplicate the information manually in Linux. Over the years, I have had to do the above on various occasions.

That's true. But why worry about the card at all if one is not utilizing 3-D? ;) Otherwise, any old SiS will do, yes?

An FX series card should be around for AGP and for cheap. (FX5300)

I always use cards with Nvidia chips. They have supported Linux from the beginning.

The default drivers for intel chip sets work just fine. The proprietary ATI drivers (video) are only needed for gaming, so I am not sure you need to be concerned about those.

A "Live" distro will boot to a functioning system without installation. I think that you have downloaded a regular version that requires installation, although I highly recommend downloading "Mandriva One" which is their live cd. You can boot to a fully functioning system and then perform an installation. Get this program for checking md5sum in windows.

OK. Do you have one hard drive? If yes, then the windows partition will show up in Linux as hda1 provided the system is ide. If it is sata, then the drive may be sda1. Your partition for installation will then be hda2, if ide, or sda2, if sata. Linux should request a format to ext3, as windows created an ntfs partition, which is not usable in Linux. The partition should not need resizing, just formatting. Try again.

Dual booting is accomplished with a boot loader program, whether lilo or grub, which is installed when the system is installed. If you are booting your notebook and it goes directly to Xp as normal, then the boot loader was not installed, or the system was not installed. But I am nor certain as to what your post is saying. So: Does the live cd boot to a usable system? How did you burn the live cd? How did you make the partitions? Let's answer questions about KDE or Gnome after we are certain of what the status is of the computer. B)

I would go with an MSI from your list. I currently have a Biostar SLI board and getting SLI working is a little quirky. You mus start in CLI. You must clean boot (if you dual boot) and you must make some xorg edits yourself, in my case from the Nvidia sight. Have you considered ASRock? That is Asus' discount line.

I understand the sentiment. But we are very pro-active here at getting things to work, so anything that does not seem to work will certainly turn into a thread about solving the problem! It is just the way we are. Besides, I have found that, while some stuff does not work, the problems encountered are not always the same for all users. Occasionally there is a piece of hardware that just won't work, but in time it seems somebody will figure it out, it gets posted to the net, and that's that!

I have never had this happen. I have inadvertently not used an identical user and had to change permissions from the original user to the current user. And I've done this quite a bit. I used to update kde and had to uninstall-reinstall, all from within Gnome!

I was there frequently and did some testing. But since they have assembled a "work crew" to further the project, no information has been shared. I check there occasionally, but I do not even have Ulteo installed at the moment. Lack of information is a real problem for any group. I do not think it is dead; it is just none of our business!

I agree to use whatever works for you. I still use Midnight Commander because that is what I learned when I was new to Linux. Frankly, I had not even seen the new GUI in MCC. Thanks, John. I learn something new everyday! While I like knowing what happens in the system, I also think that we live in a GUI world. ;)

su to root in a console. Type "mc." This opens a very user-friendly file manager. Type "mkdir /mnt/windows" Navigate to /etc/fstab. Hit F4. Add a line at the bottom "dev/driveandpartitionumber /mnt/windows ntfs defaults 0 0" You can also create the mount point and then mount the directory to the mount point; however, an edit to fstab will have it available all the time.

For those who are interested, there are three steps to successfully getting SLI working in Mandriva. This assumes you already have an SLI motherboard with two identical SLI capable cards, that you have bridged the cards, and that you have set the jumpers on the motherboard. 1. Install the Nvidia driver. 2. Edit xorg.conf to include the SLI option and eliminate twinview. 3. Go into nvidia-settings and tic the SLI option, which only shows up after all the other edits are done. You must do all of these or you will have no video when you reboot. I recommend launching in command line mode until after the setup is complete.

Thanks, guys. :P I had previously read the nvidia guide and did as instructed. Both the cards are recognized by Mandriva because when I set up the machine, it offers to run each card independently or run one card or the other. The cards work independently prior to installing the nvidia driver. I can reboot the machine and see it all using vesa. But, as soon as I use the nvidia driver, it all goes south. The driver does not recognize my monitor correctly. This could be because I am using a dvi/vga adapter. The cards only came with dvi out for panels. Fedora works fine with their nvidia build drivers. But I would rather use Mandriva because i am familiar with it.

I recently had the opportunity (thanks, RadioEar) to acquire a Gigabyte board and two video cards in order to run an SLI set up. They are a GA-M55SLI-S4 and two GeForce 7600GS video cards. The nvidia drivers can work in Linux for running SLI, according to what I have read. But, everytime I begin the process with Mandriva, I lose video. The machine acts as if the screen is there; but it is not. I can switch to a virtual console and reboot the machine, but it is all blind. I thought perhaps the packaged drivers were at fault, so I downloaded the drivers from Nvidia's sight and had it working just fine (Doom 3), until I rebooted! Now I have the same issue, no screen with a running machine. Any body doing this?

I am referring to this article. Why is it that last year, Linux requiring a user account to log into was a problem for Linux and over reacting to security, but now it is a security measure in Vista? Why is it good security for a Windows version but a problem for users in Linux?????? BONEHEADS!!!!!!!

Did you verify the integrity of the file prior to burning it by checking the md5sum? Did you use good media to burn it?

Do not rule out hardware. If your RAM and processor test well, then the most likely candidate is your power supply.

I have never ever even thought about trying Linspire. I have used well over 30 different Linux and BSD os's.

What does ndiswrapper -l report? When you say you "configured" your drivers, what do you mean? The list of steps I gave was intended to be explicitly followed, without any additional steps thrown in. ;)