Problems With Startup!

To does who can help me.

I have now desided to intall Mandrake on my laptop and downloaded 3 cd and started to install them, no problem there.
My laptop is ECS A901
Videocard: sis630

Everthing seemed fine on the install.

Restarted my computer and booted Linux.

The "load" screen comes up and when it is finished the screen is very strange.
Its like it out of focus adn it dark around the edges and bright white in the midle. Sometimes ther are two white lines horisontal and sometimes just one. The keybord nor the mouse works. The screen turn slowly white and after a while the screen is completly white, and still nothing works.
Teh only thing I can do is press the power button to shut down the computer.

What can the problem be? And what can I do?

I then desided to start in "failsafe" after loadtime it got to a dos like screen where I could write.

I the tried to login as root but only got "login incorrect"
Then I tried to login my user.
As far as I could see there was no problem with that.
But then I could not do anything else.
I tried "startx" but I only got an error.
I also tried "kde" But then I got also an error.

Im starting to get very frustraded, I have read hudreds of other problem like this one in this forum and others.

So what can the problem be?????

You are probably running a bad version of Mandrake. The best is SAM 1.1. Format your hard drive, then download SAM to an unformatted CD-ROM at http://mymirrors.homelinux.org/~hugh...am/sam-1.1.iso
Then follow the instructions at http://62.166.43.41/Linux/howto/Sam-to-HDD.html
but skip the first steps because they are wrong. Then you should be ready to go. Hope that helps.

I have no tried SAM 1.1 and I get an error that x canot be loaded.

I have tried LiveCD`s from SUSE and Knoppix and they worked wihtout any problems.

it sounds like your screen is damaged, how long was it before you decided to load the new OS from windows? did the machine sit for a while? also try to plug the laptop to an external monitor. this will tell you if it is the OS or the LCD.

If you are able to get the "dos-like" screen, that indicates that your Linux is probably okay. The problem sounds to me like it is in the configuration of the graphics display (the "Graphic User Interface" or GUI). Mandrake has a history of not getting the X windows configuration correct, and laptops can be a problem for other distros as well.

The X windows configuration is in a file named /etc/X11/xorg.conf or (depending on what version of Mandrake you have) it may be either /etc/X11/XF86Config or /etc/X11/XF86Config-4.

If you are able to run liveCDs from both Knoppix and Suse, that is good. Run each of them and do this:
Open the X windows configuration file. If you can print it, that would be helpful. Otherwise, look through the file and find a line that says "Section Monitor", another that says "Section Device" and another that says "Section Screens". Compare those three "Section"s in Knoppix and Suse with the same sections in Mandrake. Post your findings here.

Most likely problems:
Section Device: wrong video driver
Section Monitor: wrong HSync or VSync
Section Screens: wrong Default Depth or wrong resolutions