Mint 15 / Radeon 4500 can't boot after installation

[telegott]

I'm facing a big problem with my Mint 15 installation. The installation works fine, but after the reboot it can't get to the desktop, after the Mint logo it just shows random artifacts.

I followed this http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=122257 guide, but no combination of nomodeset or xforcevesa (and radeon.modeset=0) really changes anything, instead of the random artifacts I just get a black screen.

I'm using a Radeon 4500, which seems to be the reason for this. Do you have any suggestions?

EDIT: I forgot to mention, in case it's important, that it is a laptop.

Michael

[Reorx]

I don't know enough about graphics problems to be helpful here other than to mention that - you can put a bandaid on it (temporary interim fix) by going into your BIOS and changing the graphics option to use the on-chip GPU. This should allow you to boot and see a "regular" screen... you can use it to do some terminal work to help fix the problem. HTH...

- R -

[kukamuumuka]

One choice it to use some older distro for making a proper /etc/X11/xorg.conf file. An example: Boot using Mepis 8 or antiX live-CD and copy its /etc/X11/xorg.conf file to Mint' s /etc/X11 folder
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=105260

[Mark Phelps]

Have you tried using only "xforcevesa" without "nomodeset"? I had similar problems with my 4290 AMD chipset and using only "xforcevesa" worked for me.

[AlbertP]

I recommend you to use Mint 13 instead if you can't get 15 working. On Mint 13, it is still possible to install the AMD graphics driver for the 2000, 3000 and 4000 series of Radeon HD cards (you will find this driver in "Additional Drivers" on Mint 13). AMD dropped support for these series of cards, they no longer update the drivers for these cards to support newer editions of Linux such as Mint 14 & 15.
There may be some people who got the AMD "legacy" driver working somewhat on one of these newer Mints, but it's hard to install and often fails, so I don't recommend to try that.

Mint 13 is a long term support edition supported until 2017, so you will be able to keep using your graphics card for some years to come even though AMD already obsoleted the card.