I screwed up and something odd

[Tretarn]

Hi guys,

So I've been having this issue on pclos. Whenever I play a video (on internet or on vlc etc) the video freezes after a while and the sound continues to play. I thought I fixed the issue with a re-install but it came back after a while. I tried cleaning with bleach bit but the problem remained.

So then I did something pretty stupid. I went to the hardware manager and went to configure video card, however, I have now configured pclos's interaction with my video card incorrectly and when I boot up pclos by the time I get to the log in screen I am met with a black screen. Is there anyway to reset the video screen back to whatever it had been set to by default?

I have a live USB which has managed to boot up successfully.

Now for the odd bit. I have an alienware laptop which I thought came with a 3GB NVIDIA GeForceGT555M graphics card, however, I never checked this and I recently wiped the system and set up a dual boot with windows. When I went onto windows to run dxdiag to find out the card name and specs to try and solve the previously described issue, it told me I had one of those integrated intel chips: Intel(R) HD Graphics Family.

I re-installed all my graphics drivers with a disk that came with my laptop. Is there anyway that the laptop can't find/recognize the card or has dell forgotten to install my graphics card? (in which case there's going to be an angry call heading their way!)

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Phil]

Is there a terminal prompt at the blank screen?

If not try Ctrl + say F2 (or F1 to F6 will may also work, eg Ctrl +F1)

At the prompt:

> PCC (PCC get you the control centre to configure the card)

On the playback do not know. Someone else will help


Alternative - at the initial boot screen select safe mode. In the terminal when ready type PCC

[jaydot]

if you're streaming video and you don't have a particularly fast connexion, you will experience stuttering.   i've had that problem myself.  where possible, i pause the playback for a while to allow all the data to catch up.  then it plays nice again.

usually a broadband speed problem rather than kit

[djohnston]

So then I did something pretty stupid. I went to the hardware manager and went to configure video card, however, I have now configured pclos's interaction with my video card incorrectly and when I boot up pclos by the time I get to the log in screen I am met with a black screen. Is there anyway to reset the video screen back to whatever it had been set to by default?

At the boot screen, press F3. Select Default in the popup window. A line of text will appear at the bottom of the screen, with your cursor at the end of that line. Enter the number 3 and press ENTER. At the text login prompt, log in as root. Enter the command XFdrake and follow the prompts.

[Tretarn]

At the boot screen, press F3. Select Default in the popup window. A line of text will appear at the bottom of the screen, with your cursor at the end of that line. Enter the number 3 and press ENTER. At the text login prompt, log in as root. Enter the command XFdrake and follow the prompts.

Ok I did that, it worked fine and it took me to the configure video card screen, however, there were no prompts and I don't really know what settings/options I need to pick in order to go back to the default settings.

if you're streaming video and you don't have a particularly fast connexion, you will experience stuttering.   i've had that problem myself.  where possible, i pause the playback for a while to allow all the data to catch up.  then it plays nice again.

usually a broadband speed problem rather than kit

The issue still hits me when I play videos that are already on my hard drive and it works on the windows 7 boot, it must be something to do with the video card and pclos

[djohnston]

Ok I did that, it worked fine and it took me to the configure video card screen, however, there were no prompts and I don't really know what settings/options I need to pick in order to go back to the default settings.

Try the default settings to begin with. (In other words, whatever is shown as selected.) You'll need to use the [TAB] and up/down arrow keys to get around.

[melodie]

Now for the odd bit. I have an alienware laptop which I thought came with a 3GB NVIDIA GeForceGT555M graphics card, however, I never checked this and I recently wiped the system and set up a dual boot with windows. When I went onto windows to run dxdiag to find out the card name and specs to try and solve the previously described issue, it told me I had one of those integrated intel chips: Intel(R) HD Graphics Family.

I re-installed all my graphics drivers with a disk that came with my laptop. Is there anyway that the laptop can't find/recognize the card or has dell forgotten to install my graphics card? (in which case there's going to be an angry call heading their way!)

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Hi,

I would start looking there. The following commands copied/paste in your terminal can help us know the truth and see how it is configured.

Code: [Select]

$ lspci | grep VGA
do not type the '$', it is here only to show you invoke this command as simple user. Then, bring back the result here please, with the full output of the console.

Then same for the following:

Code: [Select]

$ grep "Driver" /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Regards,
Mélodie

[Tretarn]

Hi

First output, looks like the graphics card is there, it just has a friend:
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 09)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GF106 [GeForce GT 555M] (rev a1)

Second output, do I need to install something? :
grep: /etc/X11/xorg.conf: No such file or directory

[melodie]

Hi,

xorg.conf is not always necessary anymore. And if you have two cards, you can choose to have one driver installed, or the other, to make it simple. Last but not least, a number of nvidia cards don't play nice with the free driver having for name "nouveau", and therefore messes the graphic side.

First, which card would you prefer to use ? I would suppose nvidia because it has probably more power than the other one. I'll take a look at nvidia website to chech what version driver they say for this card and will be back here.

Then I'll suggest options to get the nvidia card to work, with the right driver, and without having "nouveau" in the middle.

[melodie]

Hi,

Here are 2 solutions :

1) you wish to use integrated Intel (not the best solution to get power and resources but you can try it), you can uninstall all nvidia drivers. End of the problem. (Once done, if Fxdrake bothers you, you can create a xorg.conf file just with "X -configure" as root, it should create a temporary file that you can try before installing it with a command that will be given by the console).

2) you wish to use your nvidia graphic card, the proprietary drivers are usually good at running them under Linux, so, keep the driver nvidia current : the package name is x11-driver-video-nvidia-current, and the dkms that goes along with it. Remove : "nouveau" and "intel".

You may have to reboot once or twice. You also may need to first create a xorg.conf for nvidia, which you can do as root in console with the command "nvidia-xconfig" which will generate one, usually best fitted for the machine where it lives.

You will also see in the menu "More Applications > Configuration > " : NVIDIA Display Settings menu entry to configure the screen. You can fine tune brightness, contrast and such in the menu X Server Color Correction. I let you discover the other menus... I don't know much about the settings in the other sections.

Regards,
Mélodie

[Just17]

Hi

First output, looks like the graphics card is there, it just has a friend:
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 09)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GF106 [GeForce GT 555M] (rev a1)

Second output, do I need to install something? :
grep: /etc/X11/xorg.conf: No such file or directory

You can probably, in BIOS, disable the Intel integrated graphics, and only use the Nvidia, and set that up through PCC using the proprietary Nvidia driver from the repository.

Might be worth a try ......

[pags]

Is this the Alienware M14X?

Doesn't that require the VGA Switcheroo?

[Tretarn]

2) you wish to use your nvidia graphic card, the proprietary drivers are usually good at running them under Linux, so, keep the driver nvidia current : the package name is x11-driver-video-nvidia-current, and the dkms that goes along with it. Remove : "nouveau" and "intel".

You may have to reboot once or twice. You also may need to first create a xorg.conf for nvidia, which you can do as root in console with the command "nvidia-xconfig" which will generate one, usually best fitted for the machine where it lives.

You will also see in the menu "More Applications > Configuration > " : NVIDIA Display Settings menu entry to configure the screen. You can fine tune brightness, contrast and such in the menu X Server Color Correction. I let you discover the other menus... I don't know much about the settings in the other sections.

Regards,
Mélodie

Ok I managed to remove the noveau and intel packages. But when I went to root and typed in:
nvidia-xconfig

it said: command not found

and cannot see the More Applications > Configuration > " : NVIDIA Display Settings menu

Currently, everythings working okish but the screen resolution is a bit out and I can no longer see the icons in the bottom right hand corner (internet connectivity, time, etc).

and full screen videos seem to working now

[melodie]

Ok I managed to remove the noveau and intel packages. But when I went to root and typed in:
nvidia-xconfig

it said: command not found

and cannot see the More Applications > Configuration > " : NVIDIA Display Settings menu

Currently, everythings working okish but the screen resolution is a bit out and I can no longer see the icons in the bottom right hand corner (internet connectivity, time, etc).

and full screen videos seem to working now

I have a machine with a nvidia GPU, so yesterday before answering you I checked that nvidia-xconfig still exists in PCLinuxOS. I think your system misses some nvidia packages : do you have the one I said above, with the dkms matching it ?

Could you provide the full console output invoking:

Code: [Select]

$ rpm -qa | grep nvidia
?

In the meanwhile you can create a new xorg.conf file with the command as root:

Code: [Select]

# X -configure
which nvidia-xconfig, once you will have it, can overwrite to add just what is needed for nvidia.

[Tretarn]

Yes, I should have said before I have the:
dkms-nvidia-current
x11-driver-video-nvidia-current

packages installed

console output:
dkms-nvidia96xx-96.43.20-1pclos2011
x11-driver-video-nvidia96xx-96.43.20-1pclos2011
dkms-nvidia-current-290.10-1pclos2011
x11-driver-video-nvidia173-173.14.30-1pclos2011
dkms-nvidia173-173.14.30-1pclos2011
x11-driver-video-nvidia-current-290.10-1pclos2011


and I will try to create the xorg.conf file now.