Newbie Needs Help With New Installation

[zenarcher]

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Help! I've used Windows for many years and am trying to switch to Linux. I've tried 2 different Linux packages...SuSE 9.1 Personal and Mandrake 8.2 and have the same issue.

I have started with a clean hard drive in both cases and both systems installed without error. I have just installed Mandrake 8.2, which has not recognized my USB 2.0 ports during the install, nor my Nvidia FX5200 video card, which I'm sure can be resolved later. That is not the current problem.

The REAL problem, which seems to affect both versions of Linux is as follows:

After installing, I immediately begin having a problem with the system freezing up. While it may freeze up at any point, the main point is when running Konqueror or Firefox. I have not yet installed Firefox on this installation, but have the problem with Konqueror. The system will freeze up...mouse will not move...usually for a few seconds. The system will appear to unfreeze...then repeatedly freeze for a few seconds. Once the first freeze has occurred, you cannot access a webpage, send or receive email....the ethernet card does not appear to be connected. Likewise, you cannot close an open application and must hard boot the system. No error messages are shown.

I have tried different hard drives, different RAM and such....and the problem does not occur with Windows XP Pro, when installed on the same computer. I have also ran and installed all the latest updates in Linux.

System:
AMD XP3000
MSI KT6V motherboard with latest BIOS updates
512M of PC2700 RAM
80G Western Digital Caviar 7200 RPM Hard Drive
Chipset VIA KT600 North Bridge, VIA VT8237 South Bridge
Onboard Audio VIA 8237 Realtek ALC655 codec

Someone told me to set the ACPI to NO, which was done. Also, POWERSAVE to OFF. Otherwise, I allowed just the standard install.

Since the same issue has occurred with both SuSE and Mandrake, I'm convinced there must be some configuration issue. Can someone please help? I'm totally new to Linux and really want to get the O/S working...and not return to Windows.

Thanks,
zenarcher

[Muser]

I would suggest updating to Mandrake 10, the reason being you seem to have hardware compatablity issues, I'm guessing the video card. You shouldn't have any probel with Mdk10, cuz I'm using it with the same exact video card. Mandrake 10 (at least the dl version) will install and use a generic driver for the NVIDIA FX5200, but will not support OpenGL until you install the NVIDIA provided drivers, but that can be taken care of later.