Is it a monitor or nvidia issue?

ccin1492 · 02-25-2004, 04:21 PM

Hi all,

So I did a FTP install of SuSE 9.0 this morning. Everything went smooth until the install was finished and it rebooted. The dual boot screen came up with Linux as the default OS and so I did nothing and it started booting into Linux.

But then I got the "blank screen" with the a window bouncing around the screen with the following message:

Sync. out of range (46 KHz 43 Hz pp)

Monitor: Samsung SyncMaster 17"
Graphics: Nvidia GeForce4

Ok, so I'm assuming (hoping!) it's a monitor config problem and not a Nvidia driver issue. So a few questions:

1. How do I determine if it's the monitor or graphics?

2. If it is the monitor, in (text) safemode, how do I go about reconfiguring my monitor settings?

Thanks,
TC

Andrew Benton · 02-25-2004, 06:41 PM

Type in xf86config and answer the questions. If you have the monitors manual with the specifications in it's not to hard. Even then it takes me a few go's. You can learn quite a lot about the XF86Config file if you type in at the command prompt

Code:

man XF86Config

But it won't tell you what you need to know, which is the details of your hardware.

jschiwal · 02-25-2004, 09:59 PM

Be sure you make a backup of your old XF86Config-4 file. You could select the vesa driver instead and a generic monitor setting for a start. If x-windows starts up then, then you can work on getting the driver selection to work before tackling the monitor settings.

ccin1492 · 02-26-2004, 12:11 AM

I'll try messing around with the xf86config. Hopefully that works. I downloaded the nvidia driver as well. I agree with you though: if I can just get something to display, then I can better diagnos the problem. Right now I'm not sure if it's the monitor or graphics.

Thanks

ccin1492 · 02-26-2004, 12:53 AM

So I finally got KDE env up! Yipee! I browsed the the file /var/log/xf86config.log and it told me exactly what was wrong. My vfreq was wrong, and best of all, it told me what it should have been. So I went and edited the XF86config file, and BAM, it worked.

It's not perfect yet, but at least I'm almost there. I just need to update my driver and change my refresh rate: it's at 60 Hz at the moment. It's flickering like a strobe light...

Again, thanks to Andrew and jschiwal!

TC