[SOLVED] Graphics problems

[isadora]

Hi all. Im really new to Linux and only installed magiea a few days ago. It dual boots with XP.

no problems for the 1st couple of days but now the screen jumps around like something demented and is continually flashing to the point of being unuseable. Logged on one day just before this started happening, and a small text box appeared in the centre of the screen. It was a very brief appearance but just caught something about Nouveau/Xorg. since then the screen problems have been constant. Now when i log on the following message appears briefly at the top left of the screen
Nouveau not found in PLL.
My laptop is an HP compacq CQ60 1.6 cpu 160Gb hdd 2Gb ram Graphics Nvidia geforce 8200G. Monitor 1366 x 768 X 60HZ

After install all worked find and during the boot up a nvidia screen showed briefly.
After downloading updates no nvidia screen shows.
looks like the updates lost the nvidia driver.
Should i try to uninstall the updates. cant work on flashing screen long enough to learn, understand and try to use the control centre. Please help. thanks

[justnewb]

Thanks to isadora links to "newcomers" i have answered the last 2 questions ok.

Sorry I should have posted this in Video topic. perhaps a moderator could move it for me.

[isadora]

~ moved by moderator

[jkerr82508]

Did you install Mageia 3 or cauldron? There haven't been any updates to Mageia 3 which would have changed the video driver. (Cauldron is not recommended for new users.)

If you installed Mageia 3 using the 4GB full install DVD, you may have been hit by this bug:
https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10332

To check if this is what happened, hit Ctrl-Alt-F2. At the login prompt that appears enter

Code: Select all

root

Enter your root (administrator) password. (Nothing will appear on screen as you enter the password.) After you hit Enter the prompt will change to root@--

Then enter:

Code: Select all

rpm -qa | grep mga4

If there is any output from that command then you have indeed hit that bug. Probably the easiest solution is a clean install of Mageia 3. (To return to the GUI, enter exit and then hit Alt-F1.)

Jim

[justnewb]

Thanks Jim. The install was Mageia 2, 32 bit gnome i586 CD. All was fine until i updated then graphic card/drivers went silly. I intend to install Mageia 3 shortly as i like Mag 2 a lot.and because of this I wanted to use this troubleshooting opportunity to learn as much as possible.
Found fallback mode and clicked that. Result a stable limited gnome desktop. UGH

With a usable desktop I then went to the software centre and installed anything related to Nvidia that I thought might help as well as the instructed dependancies. rebooted. no change.
Then installed KDE which returned the flashing & jumping screen. Found hardware list installed xorg. rebooted. message nouveau driver better for system. Installed nouveau All Ok now.
Thanks for your help advice and interest. No doubt there will be many more questions.
Thanks again

Prefer Gnome to KDE but have found KDE much easier for learning and troubleshooting purposes so I will stay with it for a while.

Thanks for your information and advice which I will keep in mind when installing Mageia 3 also
I will enter the codes as instructed as a learning process but as they refer to Mag 3 the result may be Zero

[justnewb]

hi jim,

i tried to follow your insructions. First (Select all) during boot up no options to select anything, just boots straight into KDE desktop. entered rpm -qa | grep mga4

No output so definately not the bug.

Although the system boots straight into KDE in control centre the automatic boot is set as gnome. ?????

Should it be possible for me to choose which desktop to use. Please Thanks

[jkerr82508]

You can just ignore all of that post - I wrote it the way I did because you said that you did not at that time have a usable GUI, and because I mistakenly assumed that you had installed Mageia 3. (I haven't deleted it since it may be of interest to someone else reading this thread.)

Do you have a full Gnome installation? To be sure, install task-gnome. If that does not solve the problem, then disable Autologin, logout and at the login dialogue select Gnome as the session. Once in Gnome you should be able to re-set Autologin.

Jim

[justnewb]

Thanks Jim. Did that and it worked fine..

Trying to install maggie 3. Perhaps you could look at my problems in the Harware section/install thanks