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> Microsoft is such garbage. I feel almost communist for being such a supporter of open-source software, but it really is such a better solution. Can't wait to throw off the chains of the MS blue screen for good.

That's such a load. I tried 3 times to install Fedora 3 on an old Celeron 100 system. Very boring box. They sold millions of these motherboards. It was an intel board. I'm using on-board video. Now, Fedora core 3 is supposed to be one of the "grown up" distros. First HD didn't have enough room. Failed inelegantly. Put in a new bigger disk. Failed again. Did it again with the "graphical" install. This time it took, but it doesn't handle the video card. Just on-screen garbage. I **KNEW** I shouldn't have been tempted to install KDE!

The reason I'm doing this is I have to mirror a server I'm responsible for. And I have to get mcrypt working.

Have you seen how insanely FUBAR mcrypt's docs are?

The last time I screwed around with mcrypt was when RedHat 7.1 was new.

People think "Open Source" is some sort of godsend. It's not. Sure, there are stellar open source products, Apache, MySql and some others. A LOT of it is perpetually unfinished, amateur crap that will never displace commercial software.

That same box I'm fighting to get Fedora 3 on is a "test box" I've installed Win95, Win98, Win NT4, XP home, XP pro and Win2003. Without ANY issue. They have been complete "forehead installs".

Oh yeah, don't make the mistake of switcing away from the box with a KVM switch when Fedora "probes" your monitor. If it doesn't find one - guess what?

I generally don't like open source. First, when was the last time you screwed with the code on a os program? How many times have you added functionality to the MySQL code base? OK. If you're like 99.9999 percent of users, you won't. So what's the benefit of open source? It's free. Oh, but it's "Peer Reviewed". Give me a break. Who are the clowns who gave the developer of the install for Fedora 3 a pass?

The only upside to open source software by its nature is that it's free.

I would bet that this would fix your problem...

Download Knoppix, burn the .iso to cd and see if it boots into X. If you get to the KDE desktop, do this...

Open Filemanager in Super User mode. Navigate to /etc/X11

Mount your hard drive by right clicking the desktop icon and choosing "Mount"

Open another file manager, also in Super User mode. Navigate to /mnt/hda1/etc/X11

Copy the XF86Config-4 file from /etc/X11 to /mnt/hda1/etc/X11. If it asks you to overwrite, choose Yes.

What this does is overwrite your old XFree86 config file with one that you know will work.

I did this on two machines running Debian when XFree86 couldn't automatically get the configuration right. Worked like a charm.

BTW...I've always had better luck with Debian and Debian based distros than anything RedHat, but that's just me.

Also BTW, if Knoppix is too big to boot on your system, you could choose any small distro that uses XFree86. One light distro that uses XFree86 is Featherweight Linux (not Feather Linux).