I also faced similar issues when installing mandrake 8.1, however after moving up to 8.2 I have found that many of the issues were corrected and it was much easier and had a lot fewer problems. If you decide to stick with 8.1 there are a couple of things you should know. First of all if you use a dial up connection, do not set it up to connect at start because if there is no dial tone or the line is busy, it will not ever load kde until you are connected and you will be stuck. Second, dont use the first-time utility as it has an infinite loop built in and nothing you enter will work. These are just little problems I noticed, but Im sure there are more.