Problem solved thanks to help from SLUG members. Special thanks to Patrick and Darren.
Just in case a neonate SLUGlet (like me) is reading this, has an old laptop and is uncertain what to install, here is what happened. Patrick's advice to jiggle del during power up with floppy and CD inserted worked to get Xandros reinstalled. My problem then was how to get rid of Xandros by installing something else. Where was BIOS? Darren's advice solved that one for me. (Thanks for the Googling effort, Darren). Turning on power while holding esc revealed Toshiba's BIOS. It was just a matter of following a simple line of instructions on the screen to set it to boot from CD. I then went on a one-man installfest. Why? Because I had a lot of distro CDs from the fronts of magazines and did not know any better anyway. I used Lindows CD as test. It installed easily. Goodbye annoying Xandros experience. But Lindows denied I had a modem. Instead of trying to solve that one (I will explore the suggestions re Ispci later) I installed Fedora, wiping out Lindows. Fedora was trouble-free. Went in easily and, with only a little trial and error on my part, was soon up and running with email and internet.. Nice. Running amock by this time, I installed Suse Linux 9 for desktops. Again an easy install but ran into a quite non-intuitional desktop display which I decided was not worth the trouble of untangling. (free advice to Suse people; if you want to expand your desktop appeal get the help of a raw beginner to teach you how to communicate with other beginners). Then went for Mandrake 10. A beginner's friend. Easy installation and easy recognition of hardware. Suggestion for other neonates with old computers: try Mandrake 10 or Fedora first. Finale? Back in goes XP with Mandrake alongside. At least until next week when I may or may not enrol in the TAFE class re Intro to Linux. Then the old laptop may become the little box I use for that. John. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
