Gnome 2009.2 black screen

[Dirian715]

I have tried searching to no avail..  And to warn ahead of time; im still new to Linux in general and a total newb on this distro.

I have PCLinuxOS Gnome 2009.2 and can run the liveCD with no problems, in fact i am very impressed with it and wanted to install it to the harddrive. After the install was complete i rebooted and everything was good. Until; i walked away for a bit and the computer i assume went to sleep mode. i could not get it to come back so eventually i just rebooted the comp. Ever since that issue it will come up to the login and allow me to login but will display only a black screen with a mouse pointer in the center with the little blue swirly around it. Figuring after some reading that i had screwed something up by rebooting the computer i wiped he partitions and reinstalled only to have the same black screen issue right off the bat this time. i have done the reinstall a couple more times trying a new cd and all to eliminate that as a cause. so now i am at a loss as to what could be causing the issue because it would have to be persistant somewhere other that the partitions of the hdd.

Thanks ahead of time
-James

[Old-Polack]

Dirian715:

Welcome to our little corner of the penguin universe.

Could you please give the specs for your computer; CPU, amount of RAM, video card used, type of drives as well as sizes. The more we know about your system, the better the chance we'll come up with a solution, so this is a good place to start. If anyone asks any questions, know they have a good reason to want the answer, so just give them the information they ask for. If you don't understand the question, or don't know how to get the information asked for, just ask for clarification. There are a lot of really good, knowledgeable people here, more than willing to help, so don't be bashful. We all had to go through what you are going through at one time or another, so we do understand the frustration, and will do all we can to get you running smoothly.

Be patient, as we're scattered all over the globe, so show up at different times. Just answer the questions, follow the instructions, and hang in there. You won't be abandoned. 

[Dirian715]

I am installing it on a MSI M677. AMD turion x2 1.6, with 2gb of ram, a 120GB Sata hdd which 90gb is in a windows partition, uses a nvidia C51mv+ chipset, and Geforce 7600Go 256mb Video. And incase it has any effect, which im fairly certain it wont, the windows installation on this computer is windows 7 ultimate 64bit.

[Old-Polack]

I am installing it on a MSI M677. AMD turion x2 1.6, with 2gb of ram, a 120GB Sata hdd which 90gb is in a windows partition, uses a nvidia C51mv+ chipset, and Geforce 7600Go 256mb Video. And incase it has any effect, which im fairly certain it wont, the windows installation on this computer is windows 7 ultimate 64bit.

The version of Windows doesn't matter except for how well it gets along with grub. As we have others dual booting with Win7 it shouldn't be a problem.

The first thing I'd like to check is the partition layout, then run a filesystem check on your Linux partitions.

Boot to the liveCD, log in as root, open a terminal and enter;

[root@localhost ~]# fdisk -l       <Enter>   <-- That's a lower case L not a number 1.

Post the results, then I can give you the correct command to run the filesystem check.

[Dirian715]

Here you go

Disk /dev/sda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x69afd9f3

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1       11796    94751338+   7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2           11797       14593    22466902+   5  Extended
/dev/sda5           11797       13257    11735451   83  Linux
/dev/sda6           13258       13415     1269103+  82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda7           13416       14593     9462253+  83  Linux

[Old-Polack]

Here you go

Disk /dev/sda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x69afd9f3

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1       11796    94751338+   7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2           11797       14593    22466902+   5  Extended
/dev/sda5           11797       13257    11735451   83  Linux
/dev/sda6           13258       13415     1269103+  82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda7           13416       14593     9462253+  83  Linux

Again from the liveCD;

[root@localhost ~]# fsck -f /dev/sda5           <Enter>

If you are asked, at any point, if you wish to fix something, press the Enter key to accept the default. Do this as many times as it takes, until returned to the prompt. Repeat with the other partition.

[root@localhost ~]# fsck -f /dev/sda7           <Enter>

When the second partition is done, reboot to the installed system.

Post your results.

[Dirian715]

here ya go..

[root@localhost ~]# fsck -f /dev/sda5
fsck 1.41.6 (30-May-2009)
e2fsck 1.41.6 (30-May-2009)
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
Pass 2: Checking directory structure
Pass 3: Checking directory connectivity
Pass 4: Checking reference counts
Pass 5: Checking group summary information
/dev/sda5: 128490/734400 files (0.1% non-contiguous), 713531/2933862 blocks
[root@localhost ~]# fsck -f /dev/sda7
fsck 1.41.6 (30-May-2009)
e2fsck 1.41.6 (30-May-2009)
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
Pass 2: Checking directory structure
Pass 3: Checking directory connectivity
Pass 4: Checking reference counts
Pass 5: Checking group summary information
/dev/sda7: 303/592176 files (3.0% non-contiguous), 88579/2365563 blocks
[root@localhost ~]#

It doesnt appear anything was wrong there. The part that is really stumping me is that it wasnt resolved when i wiped the partitions and reinstalled. It defies logic that it would reoccur after that. just my thoughts there..
Thanks for the help so far, i hope we can come up with something here.
-James

[Old-Polack]

Dirian715:

When you get to the little spinning swirly, how long have you waited to see if something will finally load?

True story:

openSUSE 10.2 wouldn't boot at first on my last computer. There seemed to be some activity, as in this case, but nothing seemed to actually happen. I let it sit and continue whatever it was doing. Seven hours later, the machine finally booted. It turned out to be a bad patch in the kernel, which when I removed it and recompiled the kernel, never again had any problems booting. I'm stubborn to the point of being a bit nuts, when I want to see what's going on in the background. The boot log from the seven hour wait was what guided me to the bad patch.

[Dirian715]

Ive waited as long at that screen as 20 to 30 minutes to see if it made any difference. would probably waited longer if i didnt have to keep bumping the mouse or a key to keep it from going to sleep. after the last reinstall i did not let t configure wireless after i rebooted to make sure it wasnt that it was grabbing a bad patch right away. I could chuck it up to having incompatible hardware had it not booted fine the very first time. I suppose i could try the KDE variant to see if its gnome specific but i liked the gnome version much better.  Ill just have to keep in mind very first thing to do is DISABLE SLEEP MODE....   lol

[Old-Polack]

Dirian715:

While running from the liveCD, did you install the nvidia proprietary video driver before doing the hard drive installation?

[Dirian715]

no, since the livecd booted correct i did not change anything before the install. Since having the problem i have tried to change the driver to other included drivers to see if it is a video driver issue. all the other nvidia drivers included with the cd net the same result, and the generic video driver caused a hard lock.

[Old-Polack]

no, since the livecd booted correct i did not change anything before the install. Since having the problem i have tried to change the driver to other included drivers to see if it is a video driver issue. all the other nvidia drivers included with the cd net the same result, and the generic video driver caused a hard lock.

Have you tried the vesa driver?