Bizarre Behaviour with External Monitor. Help please.
Posted: May 2nd, '21, 05:43
Hi,
Acer Aspire 5750, Intel i5 2430M, Intel HD Graphics 3000.
Dual Boot with Windows 10.
Acer S276HL monitor used as external.
I updated from Mageia 7 to 8 with a clean install (using the external monitor as usual), with a self-burned DVD (checksums matched). It seemed to go well, but after the reboot, problems started. At the outset, the behaviour was unusual because the system immediately used as wallpaper a personal photo that I've been using for decades. Usually, I have to reapply this after a fresh install.
The wallpaper came up on my external monitor, but no Task Bar, Home Folder, Desktop Folder, or weather and clock widgets. On reboot (with splash screens and login behaving normally), I got no image at all on either laptop or external screen, but the external screen had a flashing line at the top. I suspected the system had loaded correctly but that the graphics had failed to resolve, so I used Ctrl f5 to get back to the laptop screen, where I discovered the system was indeed operational. I went into System Settings to set monitor behaviour; however, none of the settings stuck. Reboot always resolved wallpaper and nothing else. After some experimentation, I discovered that through Ctrl f5 I could unify outputs, which brought back the missing folders, widgets and Task Bar but with the external monitor at an incorrect resolution. I experimented more and discovered that Ctrl f5 - Unify - Switch to External Screen finally reset it to the correct resolution.
Here's the really weird thing: I wondered if the image itself might be causing the problem, so I deleted it in Desktop Settings - but it just came back at the next reboot.
Setting Folder View rather than Desktop View did open up the Desktop Folder, but still no Task Bar. At one stage, after I tried swapping between the two views, the desktop contents remained visible, with the Desktop View overlaying it.
Currently, the computer is booting into Folder View (with personal photo wallpaper) no matter what I specify, and the wastebin puts in an appearance (sometimes on the desktop, sometimes in the desktop folder) when it feels like it.
By now I'm a bit tired of this and I'm stumped about how to proceed. The monitor doesn't appear in the list of vendor-specific models in MCC - Setup Graphical Server; there doesn't seem to be any obvious way of getting the settings to lock between reboots; and just to pile on the agony, reboot hangs half the time at the monitor splash screen - but then again it's been doing this since installation of Mageia 7. Oh, and PyChess won't launch anymore.
Where could the personal photo be coming from? Is there some file or folder I can inspect to resolve the issue? I would appreciate any help anyone can offer.
Thanks for reading. Apologies for the length of the post.
Acer Aspire 5750, Intel i5 2430M, Intel HD Graphics 3000.
Dual Boot with Windows 10.
Acer S276HL monitor used as external.
I updated from Mageia 7 to 8 with a clean install (using the external monitor as usual), with a self-burned DVD (checksums matched). It seemed to go well, but after the reboot, problems started. At the outset, the behaviour was unusual because the system immediately used as wallpaper a personal photo that I've been using for decades. Usually, I have to reapply this after a fresh install.
The wallpaper came up on my external monitor, but no Task Bar, Home Folder, Desktop Folder, or weather and clock widgets. On reboot (with splash screens and login behaving normally), I got no image at all on either laptop or external screen, but the external screen had a flashing line at the top. I suspected the system had loaded correctly but that the graphics had failed to resolve, so I used Ctrl f5 to get back to the laptop screen, where I discovered the system was indeed operational. I went into System Settings to set monitor behaviour; however, none of the settings stuck. Reboot always resolved wallpaper and nothing else. After some experimentation, I discovered that through Ctrl f5 I could unify outputs, which brought back the missing folders, widgets and Task Bar but with the external monitor at an incorrect resolution. I experimented more and discovered that Ctrl f5 - Unify - Switch to External Screen finally reset it to the correct resolution.
Here's the really weird thing: I wondered if the image itself might be causing the problem, so I deleted it in Desktop Settings - but it just came back at the next reboot.
Setting Folder View rather than Desktop View did open up the Desktop Folder, but still no Task Bar. At one stage, after I tried swapping between the two views, the desktop contents remained visible, with the Desktop View overlaying it.
Currently, the computer is booting into Folder View (with personal photo wallpaper) no matter what I specify, and the wastebin puts in an appearance (sometimes on the desktop, sometimes in the desktop folder) when it feels like it.
By now I'm a bit tired of this and I'm stumped about how to proceed. The monitor doesn't appear in the list of vendor-specific models in MCC - Setup Graphical Server; there doesn't seem to be any obvious way of getting the settings to lock between reboots; and just to pile on the agony, reboot hangs half the time at the monitor splash screen - but then again it's been doing this since installation of Mageia 7. Oh, and PyChess won't launch anymore.
Where could the personal photo be coming from? Is there some file or folder I can inspect to resolve the issue? I would appreciate any help anyone can offer.
Thanks for reading. Apologies for the length of the post.