Noob with no video

Quick couple of questions: 1) When you installed, did you do a minimal install, or a full install (were you given the option ?) 2) What graphics card do you use (or if it's onboard, what motherboard are you using ?) 3) When you booted off the CD, did it load into a desktop OK then ? When the monitor goes to sleep, try pressing Ctrl+Alt+F1. This *should* take you to the console to log in. From here, log in as your normal user, and then run "startx" (without the quotes). Let me know if this takes you to a desktop, and we'll set it to do it automatically, or if it outputs a load of text (and errors) if you copy & paste them into here we can take a look at what the problem is.

Sounds like the auto configuration of X (the graphical interface) got your hardware wrong. I'm pleased it's sorted. As an aside, if you come across this problem again (or just X not displaying properly), but the LiveCD worked fine (as so often happens, gotta love Knoppix for its hardware detection) provided that X is installed, you can boot off the liveCD, and copy the file "/etc/X11/xorg.conf" from the LiveCD onto your newly installed - but not working - distro, then when you reboot you're using a known working config file. This has helped me many times before (generally after I've done something stupid to my xorg.conf file, and forgot to back it up first). Penguin