Hey, I just installed Fedora 7 onto an older Desktop...Dell Optiplex GX260, 760 RAM...2.40 Ghz P4 processor...and I can't remember the video card off the top of my head right now.

Anyway, anytime that I switch from virtual console one back to X server, the screen messes up and mangles the entire machine until it crashes. Everytime I switch over to a virtual console and switch back, I have to restart the computer because the whole thing just crashes. By this, I mean that I can switch to a virtual console, but when I switch back to X everything is out of place, it freezes, and shortly afterward dies so I have to restart the computer.

Ok here's what I've tried...
-It's not a bad DVD, image is good, DVD passed check
-yum update updated a lot of things in /X11/xorg file and it still did it
-it's not the monitor (pretty obvious)
-I also tested the HD and the mem and they both passed

I am thinking that it's either a problem with my video card or it could be a software problem with my X-server configuration, either way any help would be appreciated thanks!!

The same thing happens to me occasionally. I have a radeon 9200 graphics card with the opensource driver, it must be a driver problem. What is your graphics card?

I have had the same problem with one of my workstations, and found a partial solution was to set the resolution back a bit. IE, from 1280x1024 to 1024x768. That solved the virtual terminal problem, but I really like the better video. I think the problem has something to do with shared memory between the video and user ram, but never found a real fix. My video is Intel on board graphics. (Note my sig)

I had this problem the first days after installing Fedora and then it just disappeared. Anyway, if it happens again you don't have to restart your computer, just the X server. You just have to do as root first "telinit 3" to turn off X and then "telinit 5" to restart it.5 seconds

this is an old computer anyway, so I'm sure the graphics card isn't very good. How do u check the graphics card on linux? isn't it something with lspci command? Also, if no one has any solutions do you think Fedora Core 6 would have the same problem if i installed it?

If you have an ati or nvidia graphics card, try updating the driver.

I fixed the problem. My friend found a solution on another forum. If you go into the BIOS settings and change the on board video memory from 1 MB to 8 MB then it works. Thanks for everyones help!