Need help with boot, startup, and screen display

[OnlyElite]

Hi Installed just red hat linux 7 and i am haveing some probelems. First I need to know how to start linux without the boot disk, cause if i don't boot from floppy it loads my other OS (Windows Me). Second once it does start it stars into a text login. Is there anyway i can config it to start in X. Third when i'm in X alot of the windows go off the screen it makes it very difficult to see all off the options.
Someone please help. I'm a little lost.
thanx

[trekker]

If you do not want to boot off a boot floppy and want a dual boot system, you need to have a boot loader installed e.g. System Commander etc. Linux comes with a Linux Loader (LILO). Did you check the box to install it during your redhat installation? (it's checked by default) I suspect that LILO is not installed.

If you happen to choose to use LILO, make sure that your /boot partition is below the 1024 cylinder (around 8G) of your hard disk (I've read that newer versions of LILo have overcomed this 1024 restriction, got to check out which are the versions. To be safe, just install below the 1024 cylinder)

Assuming that your video card was detected properly during your installation, this is what you need to do to configure the graphical login as default. You need to edit your /etc/inittab file. You will need root/su privileges for this. Change this line "id:3:initdefault" to "id:5:initdefault". That should do it.

Regarding your "windows going off the screen", I suspect that the video modes was not configured properly. Type "Xconfigurator" in a terminal window. That should bring you through a series of windows that requires input from you. When you come to the window "Select Video Modes", check the appropriate video mode. Xconfigurator then gives the option of starting X to test your configuration. Test and check to see that the test dialog box is in the center of your monitor. If it's not, go back and change another configuration.

I hope this helps... (I'm a newbie too!!)