Hi, I wonder if your "speakup_synth" line got messed up somehow. If you still are using lilo, and if you can tell when you're at the boot-prompt, not very easy on modern machines, you can hit control-x. That will bring up a normal text lilo prompt. Just type: linux speakup_synth=<synth>. If that works, you can use an editor to fix lilo.conf and rerun lilo. BTW, did you make a bootdisk? Any questions, call or write. Bill