"x" won't start after red hat linux 9 installation

[Jay D]

I'm a new linux user.  While installing RH 9 on a computer I just bought off 
ebay (750 Mhz, 80 Gig HD, 256 Megs RAM, Pro Savage4 32MB Video Card) 
everything seems to go fine until x starts.  At that point, the screen goes 
blank and the system stops responding, and I must pull the plug.  The 
computer had windows 2000 on it when I got it, which seemed to boot fine.  
I've since over-written the windows installation though.

I've tried installing in graphical mode.  That doesn't work, the screen just 
goes blank after "loading x" flashes on the screen.  I've tried installing 
in text mode, and booting into graphical mode.  Again, the screen goes blank 
at boot, when x starts.  I tried installing in text mode and booting into 
text mode.  That works fine.  I login as root fine (because I don't think 
the installation gave me a chance to create other users).  Then starting x 
via the "startx" command kills the system; the screen goes blank and I need 
to turn the computer off.

Although this probably isn't related, annaconda was originally giving the 
following warning after detecting my video card, monitor, and mouse.

Warning:  The partion table on /dev/hda is inconsistent.  There are many 
reasons why this might be the case.  Often, the reason is that Linux 
detected the BIOS geometry incorrectly.  However, this does not appear to be 
the case here.  It is safe to ignore, but ignoring may cause (fixable) 
problems with some boot loaders and may cause problems with FAT file 
systems.  Using LBA is recommended.

It then gave me the option of ignoring or cancelling. I thought maybe I 
screwed up window's partintion table when I shut it down in the middle of 
startup.  I figured it didn't matter, since I was about to overwrite windows 
anyway.  Do you think that screwed up my hard drive? Anyway, I took out my 
hard drive and put it back in, and that seemed to fix that issue.  I just 
though I'd mention that in case it might be related...

So, back to the x issue.  Well, I tried installing in text mode and "forcing 
LBA32" just in case.  Still, starting x kills the system.  So I re-installed 
without forcing LBA.  I can boot into text mode fine, but (as I said) 
starting x kills the system.  On my last install I paid special attention 
during the "x configuration" phase (something I probably should've done in 
the first place).  I noticed that it deteted my vid card as "P3 Savage 
16MB".  I'm not sure how to check what kind of video card I have, but my 
ebay receipt says its a Savage Pro4 32MB.  Well, I didn't see a "P4 Savage 
32MB" in the list provided by the x configuration page during the install, 
so I just selected "generic savage" and 32MB as my video card.  Do you think 
that is my problem?  Maybe RH 9 doesn't support my video card?  Should I try 
Fedora core1?  I've heard that is the same as RH9, basically.  Maybe I 
should try Debian or Mandrake or something like that.

Do you have any suggestions as to how to fix this problem from text mode?  
Or any websites you think would have good troubleshooting information.   Is 
it possible to manually install my video card (if you think that is the 
problem)?

Thank you for your time,

Jay

PS ** I didn't know what LBA was, so I'll include it here. From a google 
search:  Logical Block Addressing (LBA) is a technique that allows a 
computer to address a hard disk larger than 528 megabytes. A logical block 
address is a 28-bit value that maps to a specific cylinder-head-sector 
address on the disk. 28 bits allows sufficient variation to specify 
addresses on a hard disk up to 8.4 gigabytes in data storage capacity. 
Logical block addressing is one of the defining features of Enhanced IDE 
(EIDE), a hard disk interface to the computer bus or data paths.

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