SOLVED - NEW INSTALL: BLANK SCREEN AFTER LOGIN WINDOW

[wharfhouse]

Hi to all!

Complete newbie to Linux here wanting to migrate from MS.  Tried many live CD distro's and completely in awe of PCLinux... absolutely stunning desktop!  Having tried out KDE 2010 I've now installed it onto my PC - I think.  As far as I can tell it installed with no problems, came up with the multi boot splash screen (Grub) then onto the login screen then... blank!

I did find the same thing on the liveCD unless I booted into vesa mode... there doesn't seem to be that option on the real thing on the boot screen.

I've spent a couple of hours searching and this does seem to be a problem with NVidia graphic cards installed... mines a GEForce2-MX400 and there's stuff about somehow booting into a console and forcing the bootup using a vesa mode, but these are all for other distro's, presumably to load the correct drivers after.

The processor is an Athlon 1800 with 1GB memory.  The other thing that may have a bearing is there is on-board graphics courtesy VIA chipset which is disabled in the BIOS (MSI mobo).

Ever so grateful for any help, thanks.
 

[Ramchu]

At the log in screen at the bottom there are selections - click on session type and you should be able to
log in to a console or safe mode ( fail safe )

Code: [Select]

[me@localhost] su
password
[root@localhost me]$ XFdrake
If you log in to a console - su to root -enter root password- then type XFdrake and hit enter
and from there you can select the options to correct your video problems

I had a similar problem with one of my computers - never did get it to use the video card that I added
PCLinux always wanted to use the onboard VIA graphics chipset

[wharfhouse]

Hi Ramchu and thanks for your prompt response!

Thanks for that piece of advice.  I'll give it a whizz and see how it goes.  I'll let you know bye & bye.

Cheers!
 

[wharfhouse]

Ramchu,

Hi again!  You've done it... thanks!  Mind you it wasn't quite as straightforward as it sounds as the process introduced me to the window with strange hyroglyphs with the word 'bash' coming up a few times ( is that the "console"?), but your commands worked in it, changed the video driver to the NVidia one and hey presto! sorted!  I then had to work out how to get out of the bash(?) window, but once I sussed that, way to go.

Great, thanks for all your help.  As I'm now in the process of configuring the setup and finding one or two glitches, I'm sure we'll meet again!

Cheers for now.
 

[Ramchu]

Glad you got it !

You are Welcome ! !