I have installed Debian squeezy in an old Compaq e300 laptop, for my kids to use it.
Sometimes I experience a weird problem with video inmediatly after grub2 give its welcome message ("Welcome Grub...). After that message video appears without sync, giving an useless image. It is necessary to reboot (hard reset) again and try to obtain the right video with sync.

Does anybody had a similar issue? I tried changing Grub2 configuration and resolution but it didn't help.
I think that could be an issue of squeezy (or rather Grub) with that old hardware, as long as I boot some live cd (sysrescudCD) and I don't have the same problem.

Thanks in advance,
Matías

If the hardware is very old you might try Damn Small Linux, Feather Linux, or one of the other small live-cd distros. They are pretty good at running on old hardware. Might also help discover what the problem is.

See if you have something like vga=xxx in the boot parameters. If so, remove the "vga=xxx" but leave the rest as is. I don't know Grub2 well enough yet as to give you instructions how to do this. You have to edit something in the default parameters or so.

You can also patiently wait until the GUI starts up, then hit CTRL-ALT-F1 and then CTRL-ALT-F7. Even if the GUI picture is out of sync this might help.

jlinkels

thanks a lot for your answers folks.
I tried and used DSL in old boxes and it's ok.
But for some reasons I prefere using Debian: with it (and other linux distros of course) you are free to customize all you want. And you have newer kernels than with DSL (some time ago they decided to stay with 2.4 series kernel, don't know nowadays).
I use LXDE as desktop environment, Midori like web browser and GCompris, a software that my kids enjoy.
As I'm using Grub2 vga=xxx is no longer supported. But I think this issue could be Grub relateds.
I'll try to remove graphical elements from Grub (splash, framebuffer console) and see what happens.

Take a look at http://techpatterns.com/forums/about...ighlight=grub2

What video card is in the laptop?

I hope the vga=xxx is not being removed in Grub2 and that Grub2 is still able to start in console mode. As I forgot that Grub2 can start in graphic mode, by all means, remove all that graphical elements as you propose and get back to good old text bootup.
It is totally insane to try and start a machine in graphic mode. This is totally Windows/Ubuntu style. If you have a graphics problem you definitely do not want to be confronted with that while booting.

jlinkels

Thanks for the tips folks!
I had forgotten this issue for some time. Tonight I got this old laptop and change Grub2 config to switch to good old text mode. Everything seems to work better now.

Regards,
Matías