wow, thank you VERY much , you've gone well out of your way there...

mm, everything is on 9 except the SMBus on 10 and my gfx card on 11, interesting. it does seem really odd that my HD controller isn't getting an IRQ (normally on 14/15 in windows)

I did try PIC and APIC, and jsut about everything, the only thing i havn't done (yet but i will ) is remove the IRQ 5 reservation that i kept on for my audigy (some people recomend it for stability etc as apparently it may try to access it in some bizzar legacy way?)

dumping the SATA controller, er, lol, no thanks :) I don't like messing with knoppix THAT much by a long way. I'll keep using 3.2 and wait for 3.4 and dabble with mandrakemove a little too.

cheers.