Advent 7084 Specifications

[J_K9]

Originally posted here by nihil
So, we buy laptop from PC World and expect a Linux distro to work on it?.................

Aye - as one does

What I cannot get my mind around is that you are having problems with the lower end settings? that is weird.

That seems to be more driver orientated than refresh rate?.......what actually happens?

It's quite difficult to describe what actually happens. First of all, the X server starts. At this stage Mandriva's post-LILO loading bar has finished, and I get the Mandriva background with the timer/working/busy cursor. The cursor spins for a few seconds, and then the screen turns black but the Mandriva logo goes white (almost a colour inverse of sorts) which lasts for <1 sec, and then goes to a console, which is only briefly visible before we return the the spinning cursor. The process continues until I either switch to another runlevel or reboot manually.

Could this be a driver problem? I've got a Mobility Radeon X700 XL, and I've tried VESA, Radeon and VGA drivers but none work in the end.

However, Vector Linux (which IMO has a far less advanced installation system than Mandriva) managed to setup my X server perfectly (although admittedly it did bugger up my LILO config - but that's another story ).

Thanks,

-jk

[SirDice]

Anything in /var/log/Xorg.0.log that would give a clue?

I had some trouble setting up my 2001FP too.. But with a bit of fiddling I got it working..

Try starting X with startx -- -logverbose 5 that should put a bit more info in the log..

Oh.. Does Mandrive install the drivers from ATI? You might want to try the "regular" xorg drivers or vice-versa..

[J_K9]

I have an update on the situation.

I tried booting into failsafe, but it decided to stay stuck on the USB probing (it thought there was a device in one of the USB ports, although there were none). That was a bit weird, so I rebooted the computer and went into standard mode.
I got to the usual place (the flashing image loop) and switched to TTY2 after about ten successive hits of Ctrl+Alt+F2. Then from there I tried 'startx -- -logverbose 5' - but that obviously wasn't going to work because I still had X running on TTY7. So, I typed in a 'ps -t 7' and sure enough, X was running with a PID of 5784 (or something like that). I then killed it with a 'kill 5784', and suddenly I was switched to a working KDM login screen. I could barely believe it - so I logged in as a normal user, and everything continued to work fine. Interestingly enough, I was on TTY1 (not on TTY7 as I had thought), and I ran a couple of apps which worked perfectly well. I tried changing my screen resolution from within the KDE Control Centre, but it looks like I'm going to have to edit that manually (only the defaults from xorg.conf were available). So, I fiddled around a bit longer, and then rebooted to post it here.

Any idea what on earth could be going on now? I kill a faulty X server and get switched to another TTY which is running X and is at the KDM. All I can say is that I'm more than a little confused..

I'll try to replicate the results if you like. Unfortunately, I got a bit too caught up in my own thing to save the X.org log file. I'll get it and upload here next time if you want (from the faulty X, not the second, working one lol).

Thanks.

-jk