Thanks for the lspci suggestion.  I hadn't known about that before. 
 Unfortunately, as i said, i'm not much of a hardware guy, so I can't 
necessarily interpret this stuff.  Here's what it gives me for 00:1f.1 
(the one that was giving me the error):

00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corp. 82801DB ICH4 IDE (rev 01) (prog-if 8a 
[Master SecP PriPI)
    Subsystem: Dell Computer Corporation: Unknown device 013d
    Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 16
    I/O ports at <unassigned> [size=8]
    I/O ports at <unassigned> [size=4]
    I/O ports at <unassigned> [size=8]
    I/O ports at <unassigned> [size=4]
    I/O ports at f000 [size=16]
    Memory at 10000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=1K]


It seems something's wrong with the I/O ports? but i don't know what or 
how to fix it.  Also, device 00:1d.0 (USB Controller) and device 01:04.0 
(Modem) are listed at IRQ 16.  I don't see anything suspicious under the 
VGA controller device listing.  So again, I'm hoping somebody can give 
me some advice as to what this all means.  
Thanks,
Jonathon


Bob Gilbertson wrote:

> Jonathon,
>
> Looks like it might be a resource allocation problem.  From
> command line try:  "lspci -v | less"  for console display or
> "lspci -v > lspci.txt" to dump to text file.  Looks kind of
> intimidating to start with, look for error messages, I/O or
> IRQ conflicts.  Some PCI will normally share same IRQ though.
>
> A quick way to try another distro would be Knoppix.
> http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html
> It boots off the CD into RAM, doesn't touch the HD.  Debian
> based.  If it works, run lspci on it, see what it comes back with.
>
> HTH,
>
> Bob
>
>
> Jonathon Jongsma wrote:
>
>> hmm,
>> Thanks for the suggestions.  didn't seem to do the trick though.  
>> When I installed mandrake, i did select intel 845 (which i think is 
>> what i have).  I tried vesa, and that didn't seem to help.  Another 
>> thing that i didn't notice before.  when I boot up, it gives me this 
>> error:
>>
>> PCI: Device 00:1f.1 not available because of resource collisions
>>
>> Could that be the video card??  (if you can't tell, i'm not much of a 
>> hardware guy). any help would be appreciated.  Also -- should I try 
>> another distribution? Say Red Hat?
>>
>> Jonathon
>
>
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