menus are black and not readable [solved]

[Guest engwar]

Linux newbie here.

 

I installed Mandriva 2005LE on a donated box and the install went just fine. The only problem I have is when I attempt to choose something from the 'start menu' (if that's what it's called in Linux ;) the background of the menu is black so I can't read any of the options until I roll over them.

 

Uh, being new to all this I assume that either...

 

a ) There's a way to customize the menu colors that I don't know about

b ) I have some sort of video driver problem

c ) My screen resolution isn't set right.

 

as far as "b" goes I chose a generic driver as I'm not sure what video card is in this donated box. Everything else besides the menus look great though.

 

I've reset my resolution to be lower and I still get black menus. So I am tentatively ruling out "c".

 

Any thoughts?

[ianw1974]

You can change the colours in Configure My Desktop/Look and Feel. Have a play around in there and see if that helps.

 

The other alternatives are to find out exactly what video card is in your machine. During setup it should have detected it unless it's not supported. Easiest thing to do, is if you're OK with it, is take the top off the computer (or the side), and have a look at the video card and see what it says. Or alternatively, have a word with whoever donated it to you, and see if they know what one they had put in it.

[Guest engwar]

I played around with the colors and still couldn't get rid of that black background.

 

I rebooted and chose Gnome instead of KDE and things work great.

 

I'll just stick with Gnome for awhile and try to get my KDE interface readable later.

 

Thanks!