Okay, I have tried Ubuntu, Mandriva, and even my old 10.0 Mandrake.
And in all cases there was nothing in the setup about video. And it looks like 2 old junkers now have dead video, now what? How can ya even get in a tweek it? Sure glad did try the install on something nice.
Could sure use some pointers. Thanks

I have to add, I just can't understand why the install screen always works just great. And then it ends up messed up after a reboot? Why don't all the distros leave the install screen settings as default.
That way nothing will get ruined. I just don't get it.

Does anyone know the settings that the setup screens use????
And how to change it to those same settings in the installation before it reboots?

And how come the title to this thread isn't changed, I did it in the advanced edit function?????????????????????????????????

When exactly does the screen get messed up? Some machines have to have a regular old text menu for the bootloader or they don't like to boot.

After it rebooted. I think I lost the video on 2 machines.

Well so far the one Pc works and used ubuntu live cd, now when its finished theres just vertical lines. Whats the deal?

i would say it is a hardware issue but without more info i can not help

what kind of computer is it
laptop or desktop
the system specs
like the cpu the ram and the video card ( or the built in chipset )

on and on ....

Its a Dell optiplex GX1 Pentium 2, yeah old junk.
ATI MACH 64

Since I can do a failsafe start to the command prompt, and X complains when trying to do "KDE" with a list of errors, something is messed up. It would take awhile to write everything down and type it in here.

on a OLD p2 ??? maybe but maybe not "Damn Small Linux " or "Puppy Linux " might run using the xfce desktop .

I have no problem with mandrake running on this box, the gui just won't work.

Gnome needs at least 256 meg of ram and kde will need about 300 meg to start
right know mozilla seamonkey is using 144 meg of ram as i wright this

what is your system ram 128 meg or 64 meg on that pen 2 box

Geez that is old. Puppy will probably run on there, but I think you need to have 128 MB of ram for it load itself totally in memory. I don't know how fast it will run, but it should be snappy if you run just the baseline puppy with jwm. JWM is easy to theme, you can make it look just like XP if you like.

Bill_Johns:

Despite of an old pc there is a linux that can run even in the least practical RAM. Try Absolute Linux, a minimalist distro designed by the author to run on old machines. I have made use of it many times and it really did well. It runs like a charging horse despite of small ram. Get it from their home page, a download link is there --

http://www.absolutelinux.org/

I hope this helps as it did help me on old machines.

Goodluck.

I just loaded Zenwalk, and it works, its a bit slow but it works. Still doesn't like my LCD moniter though. This is a 64 meg memory, 5 gig hd, 450mhz, yeah hot stuff in 1996.
Its showing just fine on a 50 pound 17 inch CRT. So whats with not liking the 19 inch lcd?

Might be that the resolution is too high for the old video card, its probably only an 8 meg or something.