Problem with display after installing ATi Drivers

[Guest Hydro]

So I was installing ati and dmks-ati (I think?), changed a setting or two for 3D Acceleration and stuff like that, and now when I log in to Linux, all I see is messed up screen.

 

Like, instead of having normal icons\text, I just see the color of the text\icon scrambled up, and can't read it.

Every straight line now became diagonal, etc.

 

What did I do wrong, and how do I revert this? :x

[ianw1974]

When you get to the login screen, instead of logging in, press CTRL-ALT-F1 to get a console prompt. Then login as root, and type mcc from the command line. Go into Display, and reconfigure your display for ATI (fglrx) and see if it makes a difference. If not, repeat and change it to VESA. You will need to either reboot the system after making the change or do this:

 

service dm stop
service xfs stop
service xfs start
service dm start

 

on completing the last command, it should switch to the graphical display, and you can see if it's working correctly or not. If you login and find it's not good, do CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE to log out to the login screen again.

[Guest Hydro]

VESA was better, but still malfunctioning.

Many times when I reconfigured my ATI, I got an error from my SCREEN, saying something like "Frequency out of range"... :unsure:

[ianw1974]

Frequency out of range normally means you are setting your refresh rate too high. Alternatively, I would configure back for the ATI driver, and then open up a console window and edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf and look for lines like this:

 

HorizSync 31.5 - 108
VertRefresh 50 - 100

 

and put a # in front of both lines so that they look like this:

 

#HorizSync 31.5 - 108
#VertRefresh 50 - 100

 

then restart again like I mentioned above. The numbers in your version will be different depending on your monitor. Most of the time you don't need these entries, because the system will auto-detect anyhow.

[Guest Hydro]

That didn't work either.

 

I think I'll just attempt to reinstall Mandriva (seeing as it's only 1 day old... :P), and the first thing I'll do is install ATi drivers, until I get it right.

 

Thanks for you help though!

[ianw1974]

Sometimes that's usually the best method. If it's a new install, I've tended to do this a few times also ;)

[Guest Hydro]

Sometimes that's usually the best method. If it's a new install, I've tended to do this a few times also ;)

 

Hehe...

Is there any tutorial I should follow while installing? Last time I did this I only followed my pure logic and the instructions in the install.

 

Thanks for all your help by the way! (In this and previous topic :P)

[ianw1974]

There is one somewhere on this board for the perfect mandriva desktop. You can search those three words, should give a nice link to follow.

[spinynorman]

The Perfect Desktop ;)

[Guest Hydro]

The Perfect Desktop ;)

 

Thanks.

 

Seems like he's using the DVD install, while I'm using the LiveCD install. Does it make any real difference?

(Plus I'm using KDE and he's using GNOME :P)

[ianw1974]

Not really, you'll just download whatever you need from the internet, or it'll do a smaller install from the CD.