LinuxQuestions.org - XFree86 upgrade issues

This is my first post on this board. I decided to take the leap and blow away windows xp and install linux, and I have been happy with the decision so far, up until now.

I have RedHat 8.0 loaded on a Dell Latitude C640, with an ATI Radeon Mobility 7500 graphics card. The base install worked great - all relevent hardware was detected except the modem - and X windows was working fine.

I decided to upgrade XFree86 to the latest version (4.3), following the instructions on the XFree86.org site - backing up my current directories, downloading the binaries, using "sh Xinstall.sh", etc. I also downloaded "radeon-20030608-linux.i386.tar.bz2" from dri.sourceforge.net and installed that.

Automatic restart is enabled in /etc/inittab, so I rebooted to see what would happen. It kind-of worked: X windows tries to start, but the only thiing I get is a gray screen with the X mouse and a littel console terminal in the lower right and corner which is repeating "console log to <machine name>". There were no errors in the XFree86.0.log file.

Two items to note, after I ctrl+alt+backspace out of that session, and go to "init 3" level:
- startx will work, but only takes me to an openwindows looking session, with the default gray background.
- XFree86 -configure will not work, spitting an error out that is the following:
"Duplicate symbol ATIMach64PollEngineStatus in /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/drivers/dri-old.atimisc_drv.o
Also defined in /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/drivers/atimisc_drv.o"

I have tried renaming the old dri module as well as the new to no avail. I am basically out of ideas, and am hoping someone out there can help.