I did as you suggested, however ctrl-alt-F2 ddn't get me anything, it just stayed black. I loaded up in failsafe and called up yast2, checked under Hardware->Graphics and it seemed to show the right driver to me, but under monitor it said "unknown", and I didn't know how if it was normal or how to access it. I tried changing the bootup thing from GRUB to LILO, that made no perceptible difference. I used failsafe to log in as root, and then typed "kde" thinking that might call up the KDE Desktop software, and I got a bunch of lines started with X-something that said not initialized or not configured or something (a lot scrolled by too fast). I loaded up yast again and checked installed software, and looked under KDE Desktop Software, and it seemed to me like everything matched up (inst vs. avail versions). I also noticed, during Linux boot up, it would do something that looked like this: " pci ...WWWW.W...W....FATAL ERROR: blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah usb ....W...WWWW..W....WW.......WWWWW.....W......WWW........ " The blah blah blahs are there in places of a bunch of technical stuff that I didn't catch. Lastly, I loaded up WinXP, and it doesn't see the Linux partition. (I may have mentioned that before.) Not sure if thats normal. Anyways, I know this isn't the most specific in the world, and I probably am not copying a lot down right. If anyone knows a way that I can grab a log of this to provide more detailed info, please let me know. Thank you all for your time and assistance. -Neil Ed Harrison wrote:
** Reply to message from Savant
on Fri, 01 Apr 2005 22:54:26 +0530 I then rebooted it, and it gives me 3 options at load: Linux, Windows, and Failsafe. Windows loads. Failsafe gives me a prompt, and I can access the root account from there. Linux however just goes through a loadup sequence, and then the screen goes blank instead of offering me login options.
I'm no expert, but I have put SuSE on several laptops and I imagine the problem is the video card.
After choosing linux, do you mean that you see a long sequence of test results and drivers loading, then a black screen?
I have seen this many times. SuSE has chosen a wrong video driver or screen resolution.
The black screen is the X server, without having initiated properly.
Check this by doing a Ctl-Alt-F2.
You will get a black screen with Login:, login as root, do an init 3--this will kill the X server.
Still as root, run sax or yast2 from the command line--I prefer yast2.
Navigating witht he TAB and Arrow keys, choose hardware, then Display for video card details, Framebuffer for available resolutions and maybe Framebuffer Device. (Or, you can get all this information from XP.)
After you have all the info on the hardware, back out of all the screens back to the beginning and choose Hardware>>Graphics Card and Monitor and set linux up with your hardware.
Ed Harrison SuSE 9.1, Kernel 2.6.9-vanilla PolarBar Mailer 1.25a