Thinkpad W500 (FireGL v5700), hardware drivers = no display

[allbread]

I've just installed Linux Mint 10 on my new Thinkpad W500 last night; everything appeared to be going smoothly until I activated the hardware drivers (for the FireGL V5700 Mobility GPU card)...

Now on restart the GUI refuses to launch and instead boots into the text console - I can login and such but haven't thus yet figured out how to launch the desktop (although since I am relatively new to Linux so I may just not be familiar with the command to do this); 'startx' gives me an error along the lines of "there is no compatible display"...

How do I get the desktop to launch... will I need to deactivate the proprietary drivers from the console and if so, how?

Searching the web (and these forums) doesn't bring up any immediate answers... any advice (even to just point me in the right direction) would be much appreciated.

Thanks!

[allbread]

I've just installed Linux Mint 10 on my new Thinkpad W500 last night; everything appeared to be going smoothly until I activated the hardware drivers (for the FireGL V5700 Mobility GPU card)...

Now on restart the GUI refuses to launch and instead boots into the text console - I can login and such but haven't thus yet figured out how to launch the desktop (although since I am relatively new to Linux so I may just not be familiar with the command to do this); 'startx' gives me an error along the lines of "there is no compatible display"...

How do I get the desktop to launch... will I need to deactivate the proprietary drivers from the console and if so, how?

Searching the web (and these forums) doesn't bring up any immediate answers... any advice (even to just point me in the right direction) would be much appreciated.

Thanks!

Well, although I'm a bit disappointed with the support level on this question, I figure that I should probably post my workaround for posterity nonetheless...

In short, for anyone viewing this thread in the future (and indeed this may likely be applicable to all laptops with dual "dynamic" switchable GPUs):

On the Thinkpad W500 there is a BIOS option for either "discrete", "integrated" or "switchable"... by default my laptop was configured to "switchable" however this feature has only been implemented in Windows 7 (at least thus far Linux has no means of switching GPUs at runtime) it defaults to the "integrated" (in my case the Intel GMA MHD4500 controller) GPU and hence when I installed the ATI drivers (and restarted) I no longer had the correct drivers installed for the default integrated GPU.

The solution was to boot into the BIOS and manually change the selected GPU to "discrete".

Some other threads of interests:

http://www.phoronix.com/forums/showthre ... light=w500

and

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php? ... light=w500

are both attempts to implement some form of "switchable" GPU control... although the former requires patching the kernel (and logging out to reload the drivers) and the latter is simply a means of detecting the correct hardware on boot such that the correct drivers can be loaded (requires restart to switch GPUs).

[smuthavarapu]

Well, although I'm a bit disappointed with the support level on this question, I figure that I should probably post my workaround for posterity nonetheless...

In short, for anyone viewing this thread in the future (and indeed this may likely be applicable to all laptops with dual "dynamic" switchable GPUs):

On the Thinkpad W500 there is a BIOS option for either "discrete", "integrated" or "switchable"... by default my laptop was configured to "switchable" however this feature has only been implemented in Windows 7 (at least thus far Linux has no means of switching GPUs at runtime) it defaults to the "integrated" (in my case the Intel GMA MHD4500 controller) GPU and hence when I installed the ATI drivers (and restarted) I no longer had the correct drivers installed for the default integrated GPU.

The solution was to boot into the BIOS and manually change the selected GPU to "discrete".

Some other threads of interests:

http://www.phoronix.com/forums/showthre ... light=w500

and

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php? ... light=w500

are both attempts to implement some form of "switchable" GPU control... although the former requires patching the kernel (and logging out to reload the drivers) and the latter is simply a means of detecting the correct hardware on boot such that the correct drivers can be loaded (requires restart to switch GPUs).

You are life saver.... Thank you very much for the post.

Did you get the Audio working though Display Port ?