I let opensuse 10.3 update itself and it fried my laptop!
 

Hi again!

I feel like a dummy.
My laptop popped up and said some updates were available, do I want to install them. So I said yes. Then it told me to reboot to enable the new kernel or something to that effect.

I did and there was no graphics anymore, just text.

So I ran yast and told it to reinstall the kernel and reinstall x11, I think. I don't remember what all I told it to reinstall.

Anyway so it did it and rebooted and I got the graphics back but now it's horrible.
When the screen saver kicks in the video strobes, it's horrible.

And you can't scroll anything, it takes like a week to scroll one webpage up or down. It's really, really bad.

I have to say that it's made my laptop unusable now. I've just turned it off for the past two days now because I can't do anything with it at all.

I have no idea what to do now.

Can anyone please tell me how to fix it please?!

Oh, I downloaded the ATI driver from the ati website but when I try to run it it tells me something is missing and it can't install and it just aborts.

The laptop is a Compaq R3000 with a 2.8ghz celeron-m, 1.2gb memory and an ATI RS300 (?)

Hmmm, I guess you can't put pictures in here..
http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/6...shot10bvv0.jpg
That's what it says about my stupid graphics card.

I hope someone can help me, I'm lost and frustrated now.
Thank you! :confused:

What exactly is missing? Knowing the problem is 50% of solving it.

There was a kernel update recently. Each time there is a kernel update and you have proprietary graphics drivers, you may have to reinstall them so that they are used by the new kernel. You need to post detailed info about the missing packages as well as any error messages.

(I wrapped the long line with all the directory names because it went way off the screen. I also snipped out zillions of dots above too.)

Now I don't know what this thing is wanting or doing. I'm just following directions from the ATI website.

If this thing requires me to install that stuff with all the wiggly jello windows and cutesy effects, I do NOT want that. I hate that stuff. It's terrible, it crashes all the time, my computer won't run it with this crummy graphics card, I just do not want it installed and I will not install it. I just want normal graphics (KDE) that run smooth and fast. No eye candy, I think they call it.
I have a desktop running opensuse 10.3 but it has an nvidia card in it and I don't use that la-de-da jiggly jello junk on it either. Just normal graphics and it works fine.

Does this help any?

Thank you! :confused:

First, there is no need to feel like a dummy, sh*&t happens quite often in computerland :)

When you first installed opensuse, did the graphics work with minimum effort?

Second, run the following and post the output:

Although the right way to solve it will be finding why setup cannot find X server in your PATH - you are at any time can use a shortcut. It happened to me quite a few times on SuSE of earlier versions after big updates. SLED10 to SLED10SP1... if I previously modified the original distro. Not a big deal... can spend a weekend digging manuals (I am a dentist, not an IT guy). Or can pop a install DVD, install clean system and upgrade to what-they-want-me-to-have. Saves time when you are not expecting to spend it. This is linux, you can format everything but your /home partition and install new system every day without people even noticing it.
But... if you want to fix the problem and get some expirience and confidence - stick to petespin27 advise. You'll get there, do not panic!

Oh I think so. I don't really remember having any trouble with it, I just booted the DVD and clicked stuff. It was simple.

I just can't remember if I had to do anything special for the graphics. I don't think I did.

On that command here's what it give me,

Dee:~ # cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf | grep "Driver"
Driver "kbd"
Driver "mouse"
Driver "synaptics"
Driver "radeon"
Dee:~ #

Thank you! :)

Oh no, I have no intentions of reformatting anything.
I've been using Linux for about 6 years and I know better than that.
I don't know much about what goes on inside but I can get around in it pretty well, I use it everyday. I so deeply despise windows.
I also have a Mac too :) But I think OS X is more limited than Linux.

I can bumble my way through some stuff but I find if I mess with stuff I break stuff so I mostly leave things alone and just use it.. :rolleyes:

Thank you!

There are two different drivers with ATI cards: the closed source ones from ATI (fglrx) and the open source "radeon" driver. Since your install initially worked with the radeon driver, go with that rather than try and install the fglrx driver.

Have you tried running sax2 to reset xorg? If not try this:

Back up your existing /etc/X11/xorg.conf file

Switch to a console, alt-f2 and login as root. Go to runlevel 3:
run sax2:

Hopefully that should give you graphics

Then, go to runlevel 5

Um, I haven't tried this yet but I will tomorrow. I did something last night and I have graphics back but I don't know if it's right or not.
I just got my wireless working (woo hoo!) so I'm not going to push my luck tonight.
Two in one day is a bit much for me.
So tomorrow I will try what you have there and see if it makes it any better.

Thank you!