I just installed Mandriva 2010. It boots up, begins to start and goes into a black command prompt page, asks for login and password. When I answer appropriately it stares at expecting bash commands? I'm confused, I was expecting a desktop to appear. Please help...

That's unusual. Normally even if the graphics fail to come up, it will at least give some error indicated or possibly freeze up the system.
How did you go about installing? Did you install from the Mandriva One LiveCD?

Your graphics card is not setup correctly. At the login prompt login as root and run:

# XFdrake

That will bring up the graphics configuration utility. Navigate with the arrow keys and use the "Test" option to see if you have a working configuration. If not, reconfigure and test again.

If the above command does not work for you, use "mcc" (no quotes), then navigate the mcc menu to the display with the keyboard arrow keys. Press the ENTER key with the display menu item highlited, and the same utility will open.

HTH,

so geeks here : he only obtain prompt to identify without graphical application. Xorg doesn't launch.

when login, connect as root (su - root) type the password when asked.

conneting as root, type : drakconf and answer the question about your graphical hardware.
if it doesn't work as test, try vendor=xorg and driver=vesa for your graphical hardware. You won't have the accelerated features, but you will able to have a graphical iinterface.
After, you can do everything (configuration of the system) in graphical mode.
If problem, rerun this procedure and choose xorg->vesa (or nv for nvidia or ati for ati cards).

But vesa have to work