Mint 14 on Toshiba C655D with AMD - Not booting/etc.

[JennieLee]

I installed Mint 14 last week and was pretty proud of myself; I've had Linux before but it was my dad's tinkering and not my own. I had just reached the end of my patience with Windows 7.

After Mint installed, it ran great for a few days, and I was so happy. I rebooted to use Windows for a while, then went to run Mint again. It would not load, all I had was a black screen. I used Windows again and waited a day before trying again. After a few unsuccessful tries, I got it back with a minor issue: the icons on the right of the tool bar are enlarged. Last night, I uninstalled and reinstalled the cinnamon package, per experience of another user who had large icons, and then I rebooted again hoping that solved all of my issues. Again, the boot was a black screen.

I found this forum and followed the boot edit step: http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=122257

Now, I'm here, successfully loaded with large icons and a VERY laggy computer, giving you my inxi -SGx information.

~ $ inxi -SGx
System: Host: Jennie-Mint-14 Kernel: 3.5.0-17-generic i686 (32 bit, gcc: 4.7.2)
Desktop: Gnome Distro: Linux Mint 14 Nadia
Graphics: Card: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI Wrestler [Radeon HD 6310] bus-ID: 00:01.0
X.Org: 1.13.0 drivers: ati,radeon (unloaded: fbdev) FAILED: vesa Resolution: 1024x768@0.0hz
GLX Renderer: Gallium 0.4 on llvmpipe (LLVM 0x301) GLX Version: 2.1 Mesa 9.0 Direct Rendering: Yes

Please, help me.

[JennieLee]

I rebooted again, but not before just picking a different driver on my own from the Software Sources panel.

These were my options:

Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI: Wrestler [Radeon HD 6310]
- Using X.Org X server -- AMD/ATI display driver wrapper from xserver-xorg-video-ati (open-source, tested)
- Using Video driver for the AMD graphics accelerators from fglrx (proprietary)
- Using Video driver for the AMD graphics accelerators from fglrx-updates (proprietary)

The first option was running, so I chose the second, "from fglrx (proprietary)." After my reboot, the lag is gone but the icons remain.

Has the problem been fixed?
Should I remove the boot edit nomodeset xforcecesa?
Icons solved. Unrelated problem with Cinnamon an unchecked option.

Thanks.