Suse desktop displays as distorted large blobs
 

Hiya, I've just installed Suse 10.1, to my home system, but the desktop display is distorted and blocky, from what I see I can make out there are a few very large distorted icons.

Assuming this is a graphics driver error how do I fix this, please give me idiot proof instructions if you can, since I know nothing of Programming or Linux, I'm a total newbie wanting to give Linux a genuine real good try, having spent years as a very competent slave to the Bill Gates revolution.

My video card is a Leadtek Winfast A6200TD (n-vidia Geforce 6200) how do I proceed? Should I reformat and reinstall and tell it to install the driver during the installation process, I'd guess that this is a rather drastic method and assume theres a simple driver update method but how do I do that when I cant see the desktop environment?

Press ctrl-alt-F1 to get to the virtual terminal. You'll be prompted for login information; log in as root. After you've logged in, use this command to exit X.org:

init 3

Next you will need to edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

First lets see what it has now.

cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf

look for this part;

You will have to use an editor not sure what Suse come with;
Try nano or pico
nano -w /etc/X11/xorg.conf

change it then press ctrl and o plus enter to save and
ctrl x to exit
reboot

Thanks for your reply, I got to the virtual terminal, however how do I logon as root? tried my user logon but that doesn't work in fact when typing the password nothing gets typed from the keyboard at all.

Just type root
then your root password (you will not see it as you type)
then press enter

Hi again,

Ok that went fine, but I found the following code was in that section, and so I have not changed anything.

Section "Device"
BoardName "GeForce 6200 (AGP)"
BusID "1:0:0"
Driver "nv"
Identifier "Device[0]"
VendorName "NVidia"
EndSection


It would seem to me that it is therefore using an NVidia Driver,
beyond that I'm not sure whats going on, perhaps this driver does not support the GeForce 6200 chipset, not that this chipset is cutting edge hardware, its about 18months old at least. Other than that all I can guess is that the display settings are wrong. Any ideas?

Go back to the distorded desktop and see if you can change the resolution;
<CTRL>+<ALT>+<KP_+>
press ctrl and alt and then use the keypad +

The driver "nv" listed in your /etc/X11/xorg.conf is a very basic nvidia driver. As you have an nvidia graphics board, I suggest you take full advantage of your board's capability. Install nvidia's drivers from their website and I'm sure your probs will go away besides getting 3d acceleration and a performance boost for you graphics board.

Here is the link to the driver:
http://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/L...-8762-pkg1.run

README file specific to SuSE 10.1 here :
http://www.suse.de/~sndirsch/nvidia-...ler-HOWTO.html

This is the link to driver home page:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html

Should you face any problems installing the driver, come back and post it here.

Hiya,

Comprookie2000

That doesn't seem to do anything, the icons etc stay as the same large distorted blocks, they becomes a little less pixelated, but the resolution and distortion is the same, pressing them again it goes the same as it was, I'll try to explain the display problem as much as I can,

I can see only about a quater of the desktop at a guess, when the gnome desktop screen comes up the text box is wraped round ie, there are 2 boxes where there ought to be just one, its as if someone cut the box in half with scisors, the left half displays on the right of the screen whilst the right half is on the left of the screen. The screen and text boxes are highly pixelated and the colours are very bright pinks oranges yellow etc not at all correct. Any idea why the display was fine during installation but boots into a mess?


Kevkim55

How do I install the new NVidia drivers? Sorry I'm a total newbie here, I need a dummy proof description on how to install it, How can I download it into linux when I cant see a desktop to use the firefox browser. (I'm having to post to this thread using firefox on winxp) See text above too to see if you can diagnose the problem

Boot with the cd again you installed from, just to see if it is not a problem (hardware) with your card.

Thanks for your reply again,

The hardware being the Video card ought to be Ok it works n plays fine under xp anyway.

I will try a new installation, if you think it will help, after all it cant hurt can it.

By the way if its of interest the Suse Live I used to test with works fine except for the missing mouse pointer bug, (after doing a google I discovered that the missing mouse pointer was a common bug with suse live and it was suggested to go ahead and install open Suse.)

The disk set I have for Open Suse 10.1 is fine, They are Manufactured pressed CD-ROMS not CD-r or CD-RW, I purchased them in a special edition LinuxFormat Magazine from Future Publishing here in the UK.

I've been building an selling PC's for years so installing operating systems is no hastle, of course I've been installing xp not Linux, but I plan to sell dual boot winxp/Linux systems soon (as soon as I get my head around the basics of Linux) As the OEM builder I like to be able to provide a good level of support to my clients. Thats why I'm installing it on my home PC first.

I'll wait for your reply before I reinstall just to check whether you think its a wise move, or a waste of time.

Hiya,

I now have the blocky graphics problem sorted, all was ok with a fresh installation, but I now have an invisible mouse pointer. I can see the icons etc lighting up as the invisible pointer moves over them, and the mouse buttons work as expected, but I have no pointer so its a nightmare trying to locate anything on the screen. Whats the solution here?