About a month ago during starup, the CDRW/DVD just put out gibberish instead of the model name etc., this was before it even got to booting up, so yesterday I called Acer Support in the UK with a view of sending it back to have it put right. Luckily as I was talking to Support, I noticed it was OK again. When asked what my operating system was I said it was Linux, no Windows! I was asked to hang on and when he came back he told me his manager said that Linux writes to the BIOS, which may have caused a corruption and that he couldn't help me. He said he had RedHat and Mandrake installed on a few machines there, but he'd never experienced the problem. Seeing as I'm usually polite and tolerant to begin with, I didn't tell him his manager was talking out of a strange piece of his anatomy. The fact that all seemed OK and I was able again to boot knoppix and access the unit, we ended the conversation. Now, Acer supplies laptops with Linux loaded, but XP Home Ed. on this one lasted as long as it took to boot once, then it was gone, so their reaction was a little strange, though somewhat expected. We are still seeing this sort of sick reaction to Linux from the manufacturers. Sometimes you need to get ratty, "Look pal, I'm quite capable of supporting Linux myself, if I needed Linux support, you'd be the last person on earth I'd ask." My friend Pete also had the folks at blueyonder.co.uk tell him that the customer's cablemodem problem was down to Linux even after he was told that the same problem was there using W2K, then he put the phone down on him. The customer called them back and gave them a rocket, they sent someone out to fix the cablemodem and gave him a free link upgrade to 1M. The guy they sent out was not Linux savvy, but he said he could test the modem out using Linux, which he did and passed on a useful tip, so we now know to point a browser at 192.168.100.1 and admin the cablemodem ourselves. May be we need to go on the offensive straight away, letting them know we don't want to hear "We don't support LINE-UX" when we have a genuine hardware problem. Happily running 9.1 x86_64 on this beast, fully functional again. Regards Sid. -- Sid Boyce .... Hamradio G3VBV and keen Flyer =====LINUX ONLY USED HERE=====