Anthony Anson tony.anson@zetnet.co.uk
Knoppix begins well enough, just as usual. It gets to 'Starting X11.....' and the screen goes dark and the pretty text winks on, then it goes dark again, then it winks again, and again, but only to four or five places - not recurring...
[...]
Has anyone got any suggestions?
Aside from the IDE thing (each channel should have exactly one master, else some things complain, so if you remove a master, set the slave to master IMO), I'd also be suspicious of the graphics card. Try knoppix in any "expert" mode to see if it boots in any way, then it's on to what I rudely call standard engineering methods: 1. rip parts out one by one and put them back in the kit bin; 2. when it works, test parts from the kit bin on a known-good system; 3. if that doesn't find the bug, put parts back in various combinations until the system doesn't work.
If you've not got a known-good system around, it can get expensive. Sorry about that. You local computer hardware shop may have diagnostic boards and other tools if you get as far as suspecting the motherboard, but that can also cost (risk of a bad motherboard killing their diagnostic tools, for example).