scrambled screen after reinstalling drivers under windows XP
 

I recently installed a version of suze 8.0 on my laptop, in a dual boot configuration with windows XP. Everything was working O.K. until I reinstalled all hardware drivers under windows XP from the laptop manufactorer's cd-rom. When I restarted Linux after this, the screen under the KDE desktop was completely scrambled.
What's going on ? Has reinstalling drivers under windows XP somehow changed some hardware settings, which in turn affect Linux ? What can I do about it ?

i'm not aware of any hardware screen settings that could have been changed - it's more likely that the xp update borked the linux partition in some way. is linux working at all? textbased? or is it just the gui that's gone goofy?

Thanx for the fast reply

Everything seems to be working fine. Linux boots, it starts KDE (although here the screen is already scrambled) and all the applications seem to work as well. For example, I can start applications like xterm or emacs, however, they appear on screen all messed up (lines running all over the place). Therefore it is also impossible to start hardware configuration tools, because the intefaces are scrambled up and I can read a word.

During booting there is a line saying "no screenmap" or something like that (excuse me for not having the exact wordings, I don't have my laptop with me at this particular moment, I'll sent a more detailed description in a couple of hours).

So, I've figured out a little bit more; when I turn off windows xp and start Linux without actually shutting down the computer, my screen get totally scrambled. If on the other hand I shut down windows XP, turn off the computer and then start Linux, everything is fine. The problem is solved, at least in a practical way. Still, I'd like to know what is going on here.

XP may have your screen refresh set to "Optimal" in display properties. Try setting it to a specific refresh in the Advanced menu under settings. XP may not be releasing the card when it reboots. Why should XP care that it hoses your display when you run another OS. It is perfectly content trying to manipulae and rule it's Universe ! One more reason to like a standards compatible OS (read *nix/BSD here) even more. Setting the screen refresh to one of the available defined values may cure the problem without having to completely powerdown. They might even have to be set to the same color depth.