This is my first time installing a linux distro. Anyway, I installed VL onto an old laptop, and things have been fishy from the start. Roughly every other time that I attempt to login, the graphical screen showing accounts and a spot for entering you password and "select session type" or something like that does not show up. Instead, the Screen stays black with the crude penguin logo, and an error message shows up which informs me that my Xwindow or something like that is not functioning properly. I have reinstalled VL 3 times already and I'm getting fed up with this happening over and over. What is wrong?

Hi,

I am not at all an expert, and more than that I never heard about Vector Linux
I am a debian user, and have some experience with Mandriva.

However there are some obvious things which could be of help.

You say "old laptop". How old? The point is that the Xwindows
is not that old. I remember still the time when it was not functioning very well. (The windows are not a base of Linux as it is the case for WindosXP
it is one of packages). And modern Xwindows require good video cards.
So if your video card is really old it just can happen that it
can not handle the latest xwindows package.

In any case you can install Linux, actualy the basic Linux as I said
works without any Xwindows, you will have just a command line.
I do not know if it sufficient.

Hopeit helps

Stef

Could you please post the following:

the version of vector you are trying to install

and a description of the hardware you wish to install vector on.

If you could also give us a description of what options you selected during the install would also be helpful to answering your question.

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To have a successful install of vector you need to make sure the install media is not damaged as this can cause problems.

The target machine needs to meet the minimum install requirements for the distro you wish to install.

You should make a "Clean" install using the CFdisk utilities in Vector (Other distros have better installers) Make sure that you are creating a bootable linux disk option 52, Cfdisk defaults to linux swap option 53. Make sure that the partition size is large enough for the installation to succeed.

Go with the default packages to install unless you know what you are doing when choosing install packages.

Let us know what the result is.