X Won't Start After Install

[kwixson]

I have installed Knoppix on computers before, and never had a problem. Now, I have this older computer I want to give away to a needy family and have Knoppix running on it, but the install is giving me trouble. The install completes, but I can't get it to boot into X, and once I log in at the text login prompt and type "startx" it blinks, coughs and then gives up with no X. I can't see anything in the messages that indicates the problem, but I'm not very good with this stuff.

The computer is a Gateway, 350Mhz Pentium II with 128MB RAM and a 10GB HDD. I have a 500+MB swap partition configured. Knoppix 3.8.1 and 3.7 both work beautifully when run from CD on this computer. I'm installing with the "Beginner" option of the knoppix-installer script, for a multi-user env. with hardware detection.

Where do I start?

[UnderScore]

Sound like it video card is not properly detected or monitor is set to use a refresh rate higher than it can support.
In order for us to help you generate a proper GUI config file, you will need to identify the video card & monitor. To get the video card info, boot off of knoppix CD and do a: lspci -v
Copy & paste the contents here.
Reboot & next from the HD installed system:
Copy the existsing /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 to a back up location.

cd /etc/X11/
cp -p XF86Config-4 /usr/src

Then try to run the command xf86config. It is a text based question & answer script designed to generate a new config file. It will ask you about the keyboard, mouse, monitor model & refresh rates, video card model/resolution/color depth.
Either myself or someone else will be able to help you along.

I hope this helps.
James