[buug] Multiple problems

[Luis]

I'm having several problems with my most recent attempt at running FreeBSD as 
my desktop software:  1-the os stoped booting and would stop when the last 
message was the discovery of the parallel port.  This happened on an ASUS A7V 
board and neither openbsd nor Linux had this problem.  Moving the scsi hd to 
an ASUS P2L97S board solved the problem.  2-kde won't with either 3.36 or 
4.1, having installed using /stand/sysinstall, neither through startx or 
startkde.  GNOME is running fine, as is xfce.  In reference to GNOME, it was 
running the sawfish manager for a while and started to use twm after opening 
the configuration window for twm and clicking on try.  After that, though, I 
could not get back to sawfish until, out of the blue, it booted by itself 
into sawfish and twm was nowhere to be seen.  What can be the explanation?   
3-cups would not install via the ports collection, had to download the tgz 
file and followed the instructions, including using gmake instead of make.  
However, the Canon 2100C bubblejet does not work and there is no Canon choice 
during printer setup.   What can I do?  Moving the printer to a Linux box was 
no problem, it worked fine.  4-can't use staroffice.  had to do a package 
installation as the cdrom would not install the program.  What more 
information do you need for me to solve this problems?  What I'm looking for 
also, is systematic way of approaching these problems so I can solve them 
myself.  For example, what steps would somebody have to take to be able to 
boot into kde or to diagnose the printer problem?  Thanks.  Luis R. Ramos, 
lramos3 at satx.rr.com