Hi,

Since my update to Kernel v 3.8 I'm unable to start Gnome3, however, I can start Gnome without any issues with older kernels (currently using 3.7).

This is case ONLY when my external monitor is attached. Without it, I can boot any newer kernel.

Once I'm booting 3.10 kernel with external monitor, my laptop monitor is simply off and external monitor is just with grey background (login screen without login panel). Mouse cursor is visible, I can move it and also I can switch to another console to perform reboot.

I haven't too much experience with these graphical things, so please point me where to start searching for errors or what to check, start, etc..

Many thanks.
Ivan

Fedora 17 is no longer supported.

Can you boot from a Fedora 19 live CD? (With or without the monitor in use.) I had a similar problem with my laptop using Fedora 18, but it "went away" with Fedora 19.

I'm running Fedora 19 in fact I'll try to get live CD, but it will take some time (I'm on mobile net right now).
But meanwhile - is this issue with driver, gdm or Gnome itself, please ?

Oops! Sorry about the 17 - I'd just read a different post.

In my case, it may have a driver or configuration issue.

When I was struggling, I kept a working kernel boot set "in reserve" so YUM wouldn't erase it when I upgraded the kernel. (F19 is at 3.10.9-200 now, and F20 at 3.11.0[rc6]) To create a "reserve" kernel, just copy the /boot/initramfs and /boot/vmlinuz for your working kernel, replacing the kernel number with something else. Then run grub2-mkconfig -o /etc/grub2.cfg. (All from a "root" terminal window.)

Alternatively, if your drive is large enough, just edit /etc/yum.conf to set the install_only limit to zero (unlimited) instead of the default of 3.

If I recall correctly, my "unusable display" problem did not resolve until I noticed that the Live CD didn't have any problem. Then I saved what I wanted to a USB drive, and did a full re-install of Fedora.

So I can't really say what caused my problem. But I don't have it any more.

Finally, I have managed to boot from F19 Live DVD - however the result was a big surprise: I can't boot normally even with Fedora with factory defaults !
So this is a small step further - now I know, that this issue is not misconfiguration problem, but it's definitelly a bug.
Symptoms are exactly same - just gdm background with no login screen.

That's almost exactly where I was. No usable boot from HD, usable boot from CD. As I said above, at that point I downloaded the installation DVD, wiped my Fedora partition, did a fresh install, and restored my home directory from my backup. (NOT including any hidden files).

The hidden files I didn't restore contained all my old configuration information, and, since after I wiped them all, I had no further problems, in my case it was, I suspect, a misconfiguration problem.

On the other hand, I always boot with the rhgb option not on the command line, and, before I did the reinstall, the boot information display was corrupted. How that could have been a result of my user configuration is puzzling. But even that cleared up after the reinstall.

Well. I have too much things on this laptop to simply start with fresh install :-) Anyway, there must be a way how to fix it..
But the question is: how can I have things misconfigured, when I'm booting from "out of the box" DVD ? I haven't any info, that this boot is somehow using my old stored data..