Installing Helena, Video problems

[jonnybradley]

First off thanks to everyone involved in Mint. I have been using Mint for over a year now and have had a grate time with it. It's the first distor of Linux that I have used for more than a month with out giving up on it! I am very much a windows boy, but I am trying.

Ok so the problem....

I have had Mint 7 running on my laptop (see specs bellow) for some time but decided to upgrade to 8. Pop the CD in select OEM install from the menu, and the screen goes black on me... the laptop is still running and getting on with the install but a dark screen, not off can still see the back light is on. The same thing happens with the Live boot, no display! I can even press the power button, hit enter and perform a shutdown of mint.

So I plug another display into the laptop, OEM from the CD menu, install starts and it displays fine of Laptop panel and the external screen. Complete the install, remove the external display, select Mint 8 in Grub menu, panel goes dead again.

This is an old laptop, wondering if the colour depth has anything to do with this prob, may need to keep it to 16 bit. I have no idea where to find the file that controls this, can somebody point me in the right direction here?

Or if you have any other thoughts on the problem

Many Thanks

Jon

Spec

Acer 292LCi
Pentum M 1.5GHz
intel 855GM chipset

[lizzibet]

i have the same problem with a dell optiplex gx260 and we both have the same crappy intel graphic chipset.. i'm guessing the new xorg doesn't like intel graphic chipsets....

[jonnybradley]

I am sorry for your problem but am glad it's not just me. It's one of those where you start to question your sanity

I have also checked what res etc windows is running

1024x768
32 bit
60Hzh

Could it be trying to run at 59Hzh or something silly? I have the same problem with puppy. Puppy gives you a selection of 2 different Xservers (sorry if my terminology is out here) one will blank the screen, with back light still on, the other works with out fault.

I also forgot to mention that I can't find xorg.conf file, thought this would be the place for the settings?

Jon

[beefstu]

Similar to my problem, try this

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gksudo gedit /etc/default/grub

find the line which says GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""

and inbetween the ""

write

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nomodeset

save that then back in the terminal

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sudo update-grub

Then reebot

if you don't have An externAL monitor, on the grub countdown, press 'e' with mint highlighted and add 'nomodeset' just before it says 'quiet splash' then press ctrl-x to boot.

Ps there is no xorg in Helena/karmic

[lizzibet]

Based on Xubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala, Linux 2.6.31, Xfce 4.6.1 and Xorg 7.4, Linux Mint 8 “Helena” Xfce CE features a lot of improvements and the latest software from the Open Source World.

[beefstu]

Ps there is no xorg in Helena/karmic

sorry, badly phrased.

Xorg does exist, however for the first time it doesn't get it's setting from an xorg.conf file by default.

As far as I know, if you put an xorg.conf in the corret place, xorg will use those settings, however this particular problem was solved for me after doing the changes with grub, whenever I creating an xorg file with anything regarding graphics in it caused x server to fail and wouldn't boot.

[jonnybradley]

Thanks beefstu but sadly still no joy same problem, tried both methods.

I wont be beaten by this!

[beefstu]

Hmm thats annoying, thought that might do it!


EDIT: just thought of something else, try after the

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nomodeset

command typing

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driver=intel

so in total that line should be

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GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="nomodeset driver=intel"

Try adding it to the Grub screen first (ie press 'e' and add

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nomodeset driver=intel

before it says quiet splash then press ctrl-x

ORIGINAL POST BEFORE IDEA ABOVE:
Another thing that I had on a previous laptop was that it kept trying to make an external monitor (whether it was connected or not) the primary one.

If you can boot connected to an external monitor, try going into 'Display' in the menu and see if you can make your laptop display come on using that by playing with some of the settings, untick mirror screens and try clicking detect displays?

Whilst your on, could you run inxi -G and post the output here? Will give an idea on exactly what graphics card and drivers you have.

[jonnybradley]

Thanks for your efforts beefstu but still no joy

just to reiterate the problem; I see grub, chose Mint 8 and screen goes blank but continues to run and boot mint. I can then run a shutdown.

plug an external monitor in and both the Laptop panel and the external screen display mint as they should!



As you suggested beefstu I disabled the external monitor, apply settings and rebooted, leaving the external pluged in and Mint froze just before going to the desktop, green mint background displayed with the loading cursor which had frozen and no responsive mouse. unpluging the external and I get the same result as before, mint boots but no display.

I ran inxi-G and the result is displayed below;

oem@mint-laptop ~ $ inxi -G
Graphics: Card Intel 82852/855GM Integrated Graphics Device
X-Vendor: N/A Res: N/A
GLX Renderer N/A GLX Version N/A


N/A ? that can't be right on some of those.

Having another search around for my problem and it has been suggested that Ubuntu (Janty?) 9.04 has a known bug with the intel 855GM. Also as said in first post puppy's 2 options of x server, the one that doesn't work is xorg, the other is xversa(?) or something of the like.

Thanks again

Jon

[lizzibet]

an ati graphics card seems in order....

[beefstu]

If the other xserver which works on puppy is called xvesa, try driver=vesa instead of intel. Worth a shot!

As for those NA parts, I'm not too sure, seems to suggest their aren't any drivers found.

Have you tried seeing if their are any restricted drivers available, don't think here are for intel

[jonnybradley]

Just a quick update. Got it hocked up to and external at the mo ran inxi -G again and got this.

Graphics: Card Intel 82852/855GM Integrated Graphics Device X.Org 1.6.4 Res: 1024x768@60.0hz, 1024x768@60.0hz
GLX Renderer Mesa DRI Intel 852GM/855GM GEM 20090712 2009Q2 RC3 x86/MMX/SSE2 GLX Version 1.3 Mesa 7.6


Which is more like what I should see. The other inxi -G was posted after I had removed the extenal?

Thanks again guys, may just have to go back to Gloria