Black bands on boot menu

[dohcacr]

I have a Compaq 6710b laptop with a 1280 x 800 display. When the boot menu comes up there are black bands on the sides, like the menu is 800 x 800 instead of 1280 x 800. How can I I get the menu to display without the black bands?

[Neal ManBear]

What are you using? KDE? MiniMe? Gnome? ZenMini? LXDE? XFCE? Openbox? It would help to know which boot graphic you have.

[dohcacr]

I'm using KDE4 on PCLinuxOS 2010.1.

[Neal ManBear]

Download gfxmenu.
Download message.

Read complete instruction before acting! --

Check the permissions before you replace the cpio files. They must be exactly the same as the originals!!!!!

Replace the gfxmenu in /boot with the downloaded one. Make sure that the permissions are the same!!! - Right-click > Properties > Permissions tab.

Replace message in /usr/share/gfxboot/themes/PCLinuxOS/boot with the downloaded one. Make sure that the permissions are the same!!!

Disclaimer: This is a modification of the standard boot graphics. These files are supplied free of charge and free of any kind of warranty.

[dohcacr]

Thanks for the effort, but something is still not right. Now in addition to the black bands on the sides, I have another black band at the bottom of the screen above the "F" buttons.

[Neal ManBear]

I'll see what can be done.

[Neal ManBear]

Okay. Same download links. Same instructions. Same disclaimer.

[dohcacr]

Thanks for trying Neal, but this one has bars on the sides, and the "Bull" in the upper right hand corner. I hope your not going through a lot of trouble. It's not that important. Just a small blemish on an otherwise perfect installation. It would be nice to have it fixed, but I don't want to waste a lot of your time.

[nerdful1]

Perhaps this is where the missing band of Jupiter ended up. One of its bands disappeared recently.

[Neal ManBear]

dohcacr,
The standard resolution for grub splash is 800x600. The first replacement I made for you was 800x500. The second was 1280x800. Should have tried 960x800.

Third time should do it. Same download link and so on.

[dohcacr]

No cigar Neal. I think this must be a peculiarity of this laptop. The last splash "Bull" was off-set a little less to the right, but still had the side bars. I have access to another widescreen HP laptop, with PCLinuxOS 2010.1 installed, that displays the menu screen correctly. I'll try the files from that laptop as soon as I can get to them. Thanks for the extended effort Neal, I really appreciate it.

Could another file, perhaps, be the culprit? Seems that every file we've tried still resulted in black bands at the sides, on matter how wide.

[Neal ManBear]

Those are the places where the grub splash is stored.

[dohcacr]

Well, I tried a bigger hammer! First, I took the GFXMenu file and the message file from a similar widescreen HP laptop, with a similar system configuration, and copied those files to the problem laptop. Still had the side bars! Next I moved the entire Grub folder from the good laptop to the problem laptop. Still  has the side bars!

 There doesn't seem to be anything the bios setup that could effect this, so unless you have another idea, I guess I'm stuck with the black bars.

[Neal ManBear]

Sorry. Nothing occurs to me at this time.

[dohcacr]

Well, thanks for the valiant effort. Seems like this is probably a short coming of the laptop, rather than a PCLinuxOS installation problem.