I recently shipped my Mandrake 9.1 box back to the US and hoped it would work. I sold the old monitor when I was still in Taiwan and bought a new one here in the US - a used Hitachi SuperScan Supreme 803 21" CRT. I hooked it up to my Mandrake box and hoped for the best. The power supply conked out on me, so I replaced it. After I fixed this, the system booted up quite nicely. I had it set for 1024x768, which doesn't use all that screen space very well, so I changed it to 1280x1024. It worked, but had a noticeable flicker, so I tried another resolution. I don't remember what resolution, specifically, I tried, because I now have the following problem.

My monitor flashes "Invalid Sync." when I start my computer, then reverts to some sort of standby mode. At no point do I see the boot sequence; the monitor doesn't show me anything about the BIOS settings or whatever. I need to set it to a usable monitor resolution, but my monitor is unusable, so I can't do anything.

I tried hitting ctrl+alt+f1 to change the X session mode, but still the monitor was unresponsive/black. The monitor is apparently still working, because it does flash "Invalid Sync." on booting, and the power light then goes into a steady blinking mode. Also, the monitor was working fine when I tried 1024x768 resolution.

I also tried unplugging everything and replugging it, but it didn't help. I could try a different monitor, but I'm afraid that I might screw that one up somehow.

How do I change the monitor resolution without using a monitor?

I think it is a stubborn monitor, you should be able to go to text mode fine. Try unplugging the monitor totally, then try to boot in text-mode without looking. Then plug it in. If you try another monitor, be sure to boot in text-mode and change the setting before starting X.

You can boot in text-mode without going to X at all by adding the '3' option. If you are using the graphical lilo bootmenu, press tab or esc, and type the os you want to boot, a space, then '3', then enter.

Thank you for the reply! However, I was unclear on how to boot into text mode. How do I type the OS I want to boot? Do I type "LINUX" or "linux" or "mdk" or "MANDRAKE" or what?

FYI, if it's useful, the bootmenu I use is the standard Mandrake one - a Mandrake screen asking what OS to use, then the user login screen.

Also, how do I know if the system is actually doing what I want? I can't see what it's doing at all, since the monitor is unresponsive. Will I be screwing things up even worse, not being able to see what I'm doing?

Oh, also -- I would try booting from a CD (I have Knoppix, for example), but when I did manage to get Mandrake up and running, the system didn't seem to recognize the CD drives. I tried goofing around with that, but to no avail. That's the next thing to work on once I get the monitor working.

Thanks again for helping.

Type the name of what you usually choose. I think it would be 'linux', lowercase. If you boot successfully, you'll hear the hd working. To find out out if you are in text mode, log in and type a command ('du', lists folder size), and if you hear the hd working when you press enter, you are in text-mode. Then try plugging the monitor in. You wouldn't be messing up anything, 'du' is pretty benign.

Unfortunately, it didn't work. I tried my other computer and, at least for now, have given up on fixing the resolution on the one that was causing me the problems.

Thanks for the help, though!

This is ridiculous, how would you fix your problem if you were booted into dos even, or any other OS.

I think the smartest thing to do would have been, "Get another Monitor".