No graphic when booting

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happyusers

No graphic when booting

Post by happyusers »

Hi all,
I have tried to install several flavours of Linux on my laptop, a samsung X30 but none of them seems to work.
I have tried Ubuntu, knoppix, .. Mint, of course but anytime I boot from CD or USB key, the text part is OK but as soon as graphics is commutated, I see a black screen with vertical or horizontal lines and I cannot reach control with CTRL/ALT F1.
I have tried an old version of Knoppix V3 and it boots OK. The graphical area is reduced but all is OK.
My graphic card is Nvidia GeForce FXGo5200 32M/64M.
Under Windows, all is OK and the graphical area is as wide as the screen (mode 1280x800).
I have tried to blindly open a terminal and type "sudo killall gdm" but no success. My keyboard is european and during boot, the characters are changed so I am not sure of what I type.
I have tried various options during boot (vga=789 to invoke 800x600 or vga=792 to invoke 1280x768) nothing work. When I use vga=792, the booting screen is enlarged when in text mode but when it commutes to graphics, the screen gets scrambled.
Would you have any idea to debug the problem and force linux to use the right drivers? Any help appreciated - I am impatient to get rid of XP that runs woese and worse. Thank you.
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
happyusers

Re: No graphic when booting

Post by happyusers »

I have progressed a little bit :
when using compatibility mode it is not better, a blank screen with stripes but..
I used normal boot and added parameters I found on some threads of this forum. I added "nomodeset xforcevesa" and there it is. A normal screen appears and I can use graphic mode.
Nevertheless, the screen is not the total width, only 1028x768 and not 1200x800. I think I shall have to install the Nvidia drivers as explained on a preliminary thread of this subject.
happyusers

Re: No graphic when booting

Post by happyusers »

One step further :
I try to install the new Nvidia driver. When I hit Ctrl-Alt-F1 I get an error :
fatal server error
server is already active for display 0
And I dont have the prompt so I cannot type the command I would like to "/etc/init.d/mdm kill.
Do you know why? Any advice welcome. Thanks
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