Intermitent Screen Problem During Boot Up

[gemini46]

Hello to all. This is a repost of a previous post which I understand was hard to read. Hopefully, this one is easier to read.

While not a 'new' Mint user, I'm certainly not at the level of many of you. I thoroughly enjoy reading this forum and find the information it contains extremely helpful. So, my thanks to all of you who contribute either problems or solutions to them. Failing to find a similar problem in the Forum, or just not knowing the key words to search with, here is my problem.

When running Elyssa either from a live CD or from a Linux dedicated hard drive on my PC, the boot process is sometimes interrupted by a flashing screen full of colors and symbols. This does not happen every time I boot up but rather an intermittent problem. It also occurs at times when my monitor has gone to sleep (screensaver on) and I awaken it.

During the boot process, this screen appears between the splash screen and the login screen. When I get it, I have to warm boot the PC repeatedly until I get a clean boot. Sometimes it takes 2 or 3 warm boots to get a clean boot even with a live CD. I didn't seem to have the problem with Darnya. The problem occurred both with Ubuntu 8.04 and Elyssa live CD and full install.

I am running Mint on a P4 PC with a ABIT IS7 mobo and Intel 865PE chip set and 2Gb of memory. My graphics card is an NVIDIA Asylum GeForce FX 5700 Ultra 128 MB AGP Insane 3D Graphics card. I'm a highly satisfied Mint user and enjoy the freedom it provides from Microsoft Windows. I want to compliment everyone involved with the development and support of the Ubuntu/Mint distros on a great job!

[grimdestripador]

I have this occasionally, Just recently been experiencing it. I have ssh setup, and even though it flashes, I am able to communicate with it though another box. I have found if you wait long enough for bootup, you can get your screen back to normal by entering TTy1 by pressing Ctrl-Alt-1 then going back into graphical by pressing Ctrl-Alt-7. If this does not work, try Ctrl-Alt-Backspace a couple times. Oddly, I believe I experience this problem more often when i leave bootable CDs in my sata cd drive.

[gemini46]

Thanks grimdestripador. I'll give this a try next time I have the problem. I'm still looking for a longterm solution. You say you recently began experiencing it. What recent changes you made triggered the startup? Also please help me out with the abbreviations in your post - ssh? TTy1? Many thanks.

[grimdestripador]

if "sh" is the acronym for shell
then "ssh" would be the secure version of a shell.
ssh is a way to log in to a remote computer through a text only "Terminal" interface

TTy1 is used to indicate a local terminal session. You get to TTy1 by pressing Ctrl-Alt-F1. TTy7 is the terminal session where KDE and Gnome are loaded on to. In my engineering classes it would stand for Teletypewriter or A generic term for any computer data terminal or associated serial interface.

[gemini46]

Got it. Thanks. I'm still digging. At the present time I'm focusing on a possible video card driver conflict. If I find a solution, I'll share it with the community. Cheers.

[gemini46]

Here's an update. I've looked at numerous posts and threads regarding the problem of scrambled screens during the boot process. The more I read, the more it seemed that the problem was associated with a video card issue. While Googling the topic, I ran across a link to a post here in the Mint Forum by Mclovin that appeared to have some merit.

On a hunch, after reading McLovin's post, I decided to try EnvyNG. I selected the NVIDIA tab then selected the "install the NVIDIA driver (Automatic Hardware Detection) option. I then selected the driver version 173.14.12 and launched the app. When the program was finished, I rebooted. I'm happy to report that I haven't had a recurrence of the garbled screen problem at all. In fact, my system seems to be more robust with all of the available screen saver options fully functional. Awesome!

I wish that I had the technical savvy to explain all of this but simply do not. I am elated to have a problem free version of Elyssa running at this point. Thanks to McLovin for his Dec 19,2008 post and to those of you who responded to my plea for help. Linux users rock! Here's the link to McLovin's post for anyone interested in seeing what he had to say.

http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=19908

[grimdestripador]

McLovin.
Priceless