UNDEFINED MODE NUMBER error

Dear newbies,
I believe a lot of you have to see this stupid message, "You passed an undefined mode number. Press Enter to see video modes available or Space to continue or wait 30 seconds"

Just for all you newbies, I'm posting the solution to this problem which will enable all of you to get rid of it forever. Heres what you do:

IF YOU ARE USING LILO BOOTLOADER

First login as root. Then look for the lilo.conf file. You'll probably find this here /etc/lilo.conf

Open this file in any text editor. You'll see some text. Look for this line
vga=

Whatever value there is after the '=' (equal to) sign, replace it with 'normal'.
So it should look like this

vga=normal

Now save the changes you have made (if u get the error message that u do not have enough permissions to make this change, then u are NOT logged in as root. Login as root first. Or in some cases, just right-click on the lilo.conf file and Actions>Edit as root)

Once u have made the changes to your lilo.conf file and saved them, reboot. And bingo! that stupid error does not come up anymore!

IF YOU ARE USING GRUB BOOTLOADER

First login as root. Then look for the grub config file. Depending on the distro the config file might be one of these:

/boot/grub/menu.lst
/boot/grub/grub.conf

Open this file in any text editor. You'll see some text. Look for this line
vga=

Whatever value there is after the '=' (equal to) sign, replace it with 'normal'.
So it should look like this

vga=normal

Now save the changes you have made (if u get the error message that u do not have enough permissions to make this change, then u are NOT logged in as root. Login as root first. Or in some cases, just right-click on the lilo.conf file and Actions>Edit as root. Another way is through terminal.)

Once u have made the changes to your lilo.conf file and saved them, reboot. And bingo! that stupid error does not come up anymore!

Hope this helps.
And I hope you all enjoy using Linux. Its FAR BETTER than Windows in many ways. By the way my fav distro is SimplyMEPIS 3.3 - because its FREE and a ready-to-use desktop distro and AWESOME for newbies. Its a LiveCD+InstallationCD+RecoveryCD all in one! And it has a NICE FULLY GRAPHICAL INSTALLER AND DiskPartitioner QTParted!

Whats more soon 3 Extra CD ISOs containing more apps, games & software for SimplyMEPIS 3.3 will soon be avilable for FREE DOWNLOAD!! Check out www.mepis.org and www.mepislovers.com

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Love to all Linux newbies
CoolBlue

not too noobie myself, but I've been looking for this solution anyway. Thank you, er, thank u!

lol

This is exactly what I was looking for!

Thanks Much.

Rarely but not always vga=normal might still give u the same error....so try setting vga=9 and see.

Hope this helps.

All newbies welcome.....I know how pissed off I used to get at seeing this message on bootup and wished I could solve it!

Anyways, my most fav distro now is Kubuntu, NOT Mepis

Dear coolblue,

Can you explain to me how can i login as root ( what should i write ? )
and how can i edit lilo.conf ( by using bash and how ? or by notepad in windows )

Actually, After entering failsafe what should i do then ?

Note: I installed Mandrive 2006 and selected LILO BOOTLOADER
& my laptop is ferrari 4000.

? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

sorry digital hand i didnt see ur post as i dont frequent this forum too often...im just a simple ubuntu user...no geek

To login as root, at the login prompt:
Username: root
Password: give the root password here

You should be careful when u are logged in as root. There is no need to be logged in as root...u can do all things logged in as normal user as well...u just have to give the root password.

If u want to edit lilo.conf just right-click the file (from inside Konqueror...I assume u are using KDE) and select "Edit as root".

What u should do after entering failsafe depends on what u want to do...

Hope this helps.

I'm runnign Suse 10.1 and for me the steps were slightly different.
I had to modify /boot/grub/menu.lst

There there was a vga=??? for each of the boot menu options. I changed it to vga=normal and the bootup error was gone.

Thanks for the help it definately pointed me in th eright direction.