Mandrake won't start!!

I intalled mandrake linux 8.1 on my old computer, everything installed right, and I rebooted.
I am taken to the startup screen, then I am taken to the login screen, with a dos-like picture of a penguin. within 4 secs. the screen goes black and all I see is a mouse cursor. and nothing happends.

anyone can help me on this?


the computer its installed on is

AMD K6 400
Compaq-made mobo
ATI Radeon 32mb pci
220mb of ram

Anything else we might need to know ?

Is Linux the only OS running on it ? Any Dual Boot with Win98/2K/XP ?

When the screen goes blank, did it go into X windows or did it stay in the DOS like screen?

I think it's attempting to go into X Graphical mode but something keeps hanging. When you install it, after configuring X, it asks you if you want to launch the X server automatically, is there a way to stop it from doing so. Even when you press CTRL + ALT + BACKSPACE, it goes back to the BASH prompt & then restarts the X server again.

In the case that you're stucked in starting X, try pressing:

ALT Fx

That should kick you to the next terminal screen available. If that doesn't work try:

CTRL ALT Fx

Can't remember exactly which one is the combo. Where x can be from 2-6.

Once you're successful, you can either:

1. Edit the /etc/inittab file and make the default runlevel to 3 so that it'll boot to the text mode

2. Run xf86config (there should be a better config tool now I think) and reconfigure X again.

Hope that helps.