Dell Inspiron 6400 + ATI X1400 + Cant Boot

[MagnusB]

I think it is possible to force vesa with boot option, though I am not sure how. I know the GParted liveCD has this option, you could take a look at that and try that boot option, not guaranteed to work though.

[JohnKFT]

I had this problem with an old Dell Inspiron 7500 and wrestled with the same things as you. As I recall I solved the problem by pressing F4 before the boot and setting the resolution to the one I know is standard for the machine.

I then found it kept recycling the partition editor instead of proceeding with the install, when I installed to the hard disk. I think I just kept bashing away and suddenly it all worked. Then I had to put acpi=off in the boot sequence - initially by editing it at the boot prompt but then I wrote it into the grub menu.lst. Hope this helps. Daryna is great!

John

[MagnusB]

Thanks Magnus but you got me thinking about this "Force Vesa" is there an option I can set with the CD I already have?

Yes, I think so, but as I said, I am not sure how to. There are a ton of cheat codes for boot (yeah, that is they are called), you could try vga=789, not sure what mode you want though. Look here and here. 789 will set 800x6000 24bit. You probably need to combine a few of, like noacpi etc.