Blank monitor on boot up

[Liam]

I have just installed Kubuntu (with Koffice) on two machines. First install went great no problems.

However when the second PC rebooted on the completion of the install everything appeared to be going well... until the point that it shooud start the GUI interface. At this point the screen just went blank. I have swapped the monitors around (THe first PC used a CRT and the second intall was done with an LCD screen) but still no joy on rebooting.

Any clues anyone?

As I am a complete newb to linux can you make the explanation very step x step and simple.

Many thanks in advance.

[sky]

Re: Blank monitor on boot up

Hi,

It seems that your computers are not exactly the same... Maybe you don't have same graphic card for example. You should try to reconfigure xserver to make it work...
when you're logging in console (as no gui is starting) you should type :

sudo dpkg --reconfigure xserver-xorg

then follow the configuration wizard, choose well your resolution and graphic card and reboot, it should be better...

[Liam]

Re: Blank monitor on boot up

Thanks Sky I have tried this but must be missing something when I type 'sudo dpkg --reconfigure xserver -xorg' I get error message, 'Unknown option --reconfigure'

Tried sudo dpkg-reoncfigure xserver -xorg and this seems to get me into the vide card and key board setting area.

I have stepped thru the video settings part and it seems to detect my video card and monitor correctly. The video card is detected correctly as a Trident S3 64V2/DX 86c775 and the monitor is detected correctly as an LM929 (AOC) monitor. I took default settings where provided and took my best guess at the other settings for the video set up I set Horizontal at 24-83 and V-Frequency at 55-75Hz from monitor specificatins in manua. Also tried several other settings but none of this has helped. Any further suggestions?

When it gets tothe point of loading the GUI desktop the screen gives an error message "no input" and goes blank (into a sleep mode).

Many thanks in advance.

[Hestia]

Re: Blank monitor on boot up

Hardware can not be switched around like that in linux without reconfiguring stuff.... this includes your monitors. The file xorg.conf contains details about your graphics card, monitor(s), mouse, keyboard etc. When you change the monitor without changing the configuration things stop working. Once you get a working configuration and are up and running, then you can tweak your xorg.conf to include details of both monitors. Anyway, when you're trying to get X working don't aim to get your best resolution and refresh rate, just get something that works even if it is a poor resolution and you can work from there. First try reconfiguring as you've already done, but aim for lower resolutions and refresh rate. This usually works and then you can get into kde and start tweaking your xorg.conf.

[sky]

Re: Blank monitor on boot up

Hestia is right, you should try to get it working, but this "no input" error can be a mistake with keyboard config, can you check out higher what are the errors ?
There's a file called /var/log/Xorg.0.log which contains all details of starting xorg...

Good luck

[Liam]

Re: Blank monitor on boot up

Many thanks for the help so far. OK I now have the monitior up and working. The fix to get something happening was to change from S3 to Vesa on the Xorg.conf file. It seems my card a S3 Trio Virge Ver 1.0 can support a max resolution of 1024 x 768 but the max I can can get it running at the moment is 800 x 600.

I am very keen to improve the resolution to 1024 x 768.

Can anyone provide any suggested settings to try in Xorg.conf?

[OuchOfDeath]

Re: Blank monitor on boot up

Hardware can not be switched around like that in linux without reconfiguring stuff.... this includes your monitors.

Yes it can, i do all the time with VMWare.

[Hestia]

Re: Blank monitor on boot up

Many thanks for the help so far. OK I now have the monitior up and working. The fix to get something happening was to change from S3 to Vesa on the Xorg.conf file. It seems my card a S3 Trio Virge Ver 1.0 can support a max resolution of 1024 x 768 but the max I can can get it running at the moment is 800 x 600.

I am very keen to improve the resolution to 1024 x 768.

Can anyone provide any suggested settings to try in Xorg.conf?

Vesa usually works when the others don't. I used to go through this nightmare with my ati card a few years back, it was a pain to get it working, nvidia works so much better with linux. Anyway, I did a quick web search to see if your card has a driver of its own somewhere, couldn't find anything so it looks like you'll have to do it the geeky way and manually edit your xorg.conf. Could you post the contents of your current xorg.conf file here and also specify the specs of your monitors (included max refresh rate for the specified resolution and your screen size might be helpful as well) and card

[Nirvana]

Re: Blank monitor on boot up

the correct command for reconfiguring xorg.conf is

sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

If your graphics card is a virge, then try

xserver-xorg-driver-s3virge

then

sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

and choose the virge driver

[Liam]

Re: Blank monitor on boot up



Yay finally!

Tried all the drivers available via sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg nothing seemed to work although it was always very keen to auto detect my video card correctly - auto detected driver didn't work either.

Finally set the defaultdepth down from 24 to 16 and bingo!

Many thanks for all the help and suggestions - I've learnt a lot through this minor hassle.

Now all I need to work out is how to install a second hard drive.

[rollo]

Re: Blank monitor on boot up

i found the second drive part not so bad.Just put it inside, used the Windows 98 disc for a command prompt after telling bios to find the A drive to boot from and then using the autodetect . I'm sure "fdisk" was a part here too. Shouldn't have probs as I discovered it is difficult to hash it up(even for me). Play with it and you will find a deeper knowledge.