kieren

Thanks, that got my menus back :D My internet connection is still fubar though. Could this be because of an updated security file or something? I connect to the internet via a Linksys BEFSR41 DSL router. My network card is 3Com Etherlink XL 10/100 3C905C-TX. It worked fine until the web update last night. I tried letting it autodetect my settings again mut no joy. Any suggestions please?

I did a web update last night, and I let it update everything. Now when I log in all my menus are empty and I can't even get on the internet. Does anyone have any ideas why this could be? Any help is much appreciated.

Ahh, thankyou. Yes, it appears in blackbox to be Menu -> Session -> Exit Hehe, it seems I am so used to Windows, I was looking for words like "logout" or "shutdown". It didn't occur to me to look for something simple like "exit". I'm not the sharpest tool in the box, but I'm getting better. :D

This is embarassingly daft, and frustrating, but I was experimenting with different GUIs and logged into blackbox. Now I can't figure out how to log out. All I see is a black and white grid with a bar at the bottom with "workspace 1" and the time. I can right click on the grid to open applications, but none of the options is logout. Call me stubborn, but I don't want to hit the reset button on my box - there has to be a way. Any help is appreciated.

Woohoo! I found the problem, a faulty IDE ribbon of all things. I started substituting things from my main system into the server, and the IDE ribbon sorted it. I am surprised though, I would have thought that it would either work or not work. I have never heard of a ribbon cable causing a problem like that before. Also, that machine has been running Win2K server until yesterday, quite happily too. It's one of those things I suppose. Jetway VA266b is the mainboard in the server. It's a Socket A board running the Via 266 chipsets. Thanks alot for the replies anyway. It was an embarassingly stupid fault, but I suppose these things can happen to us all.

Further to previous post: I plugged the same hard drive into a different machine - my main machine - and all is well. After a couple of teething problems I got up and running, and I am writing this from Mandrake 9.2. Here are the specs of my main machine: Asus A7N8X AMD XP 2600 1024MB DDR 333 RAM Lite-On DVD RW ATI Radeon 9500 128 DDR I think this proves the hard drive is OK (80GB Seagate Barracuda 7200) I also swapped the CD Rom drive in the other machine for a spare which I knew was fine, but no change. That only leaves the processor, MBoard, RAM or graphics adapter that could have a problem. The bios on the board is right up to date. Any suggestions?

Thanks for the instructions, very comprehensive, just what I need! I just reinstalled (for the 14th or 15t time, losing count) and successfully installed grub this time. Unfortunately now I get: GRUB Loading stage2Read Error If it helps any, here is my system configuration: AMD Duron 1400 Jetway VA266b 512MB SDR 133 Voodoo 3 3000 (hehe, only one I had spare) Sony 52x CDRom Seagate Barracuda 80GB 7200RPM 3Com 10/100 3C905C NIC I have tried various configurations of hard drive partitions, but the best I could get with LILO was a different error code after the "L", or sometimes even none at all. I have tried letting the setup program pick its own configurations, and using various guesses of my own. Whilst I am on the subject though, can anyone tell me basically what the mount titles are for? /boot /rar /usr etc? Are there any definate dos/don'ts regarding these? Do any of the mounts have any preference to what file system they are on? So far I have only been using Linux Native and Swap. Again, any information appreciated. Thanks for the welcome too :D

Greetings. I am the ultimate Linux newbie, but I have worked with Windows for a few years now. I am currently trying to install Mandrake 9.2 on my server but I consistently get messages like "L 99 99 99 99 99 " on rebooting. I have trawled through the forums and seen (and tried) many suggestions like making 35MB /boot partitions at the start of the drive etc, but none seem to work. The best advice I have seen so far is to install GRUB instead of LILO. What I can't figure out is how to force it to install GRUB. It seems to install LILO every time by default, and I can't see any buttons or options which allow me to tell it to do otherwise. Any information appreciated.