Video Woes??

[shafe1]

Yes, the probelm is in X Windows. Some times it will just drop the desktop and the screen will start to flash, and I can see what looks like part of the Penguin fron=m the console page but it's hard to tell, If I switch to a console page I'll have the login prompt but the system won't respond. As I said I also some times have a similar problem when I log out or shutdown from the X. I found a graphics card that seemed to match what I have in the hardware list during the install, but as I said Windows had reported the card as a Trio. According to the Supported hardware list at Mandrake, Most S3 cards (which this is one ) are supported. ALso, the Cyrix MII is supposedly supported. My sound card has A minor problem ( I can't get th Microphone to be recognized) however, I read somewhere that some times the permissions may be set wrong so only root can record... I don't recall trying to use the Microphone as root. The Sound card was recognized in Windows as An ESS 1868, when I ran sndconfig
it passed both tests, CDs play in X, smiletris :-) makes sounds in KDE (haven't tried any big games like Myth yet, nor have I tried sound in Gnome). Only other problem with sound is I can't get the a system sound for events to play. And according to the supported hW list Mandrake supports an ESS 1868. In X under Lothar the card is reports as an sb.compat generic (if I remember right). I'm not sure about the Kernel version It's the one that came with Mandrake 7.0 Complete from macmillan, I can check when I get home and let you know. I tried to check the mandrake and Linuxcare/macmillan sites to find the kernel version with no luck.

[shafe1]

Well, my family is finally getting use to Linux. Well at least the games anyway... but I still seem to have some minor glitches I hope somebody can tell me what is going on. (I checked out a redhat book but couldn't find Anything on this.
Here goes... I'm running Mandrake 7.0 on a Cyrix PR-200, with 48 MB RAM, an ESS 1868 sound card, and a DataExpert DSV 3365 Video card. Any way, sometimes for no apparent reason (like in the middle of a game you click the mouse on the screen) the GUI seems to crash. The screen starts to flash, The desktop is gone, And at these times when I switch to a console screen I can't login even as root. There's also time when you I logout of the graphical environment, where it will either just get hung at a blank screen and not get back to the login screen, or if I get back to there and shutdown I get the blank screen with the cursor blinking in the upper left corner. After restarting the PC, sometimes it will clean itself and boot fine, other times I have to enter the root password and manually clean the file systems.
I'm thinking this is a video configuration problem. Even though the book for the card say it is a DataExpert, windows had Identified it as a Trio S3(765+) (if I remember right). Has anyone else had this type of problem, I'm beginning to wonder if it could even be the distribution I'm running and have thought about going to Turbo Linux ( the workstation version says it is designed for the desktop )or Storm or even buying the Deluxe edition of Corel...
As always, any help is appreciated.

[Cymbeline]

I see three warning flags already: the graphics chipset, the Cyrix processor, and possibly the sound card.

Is the crash taking place in X Windows? What version of the Linux kernel are you using? Is the sound card working?

Cymbeline