You need to open the file with an editor, e.g. Emacs, pico, nano, vi, etc and you'll need to be root in order to be able to write to it.

You could try running "xorgconfig" to configure the server.
For X11 you can run "XF86Config" as root user. With all due respect but I would try running that first since it guesses are better than mine. If that doesn't work you can always edit the config file after.


When I type in egrep -v "^\((\*\*|II)" /var/log//XFree86.0.log I get a scrolling screen
What you need to run is "egrep -v "^\((\*\*|||)" /var/log//XFree86.0.log > /tmp/xfree.err". Now you can post the contents of /tmp/xfree.err or "less /tmp/xfree.err" to read it (q to quit), but better run "XF86Config" first.

I just want to thank everyone for offering the help and having patience with me. My boss ended up calling someone in to fix the problem and get the computer going. I do not know what he did to resolve the issue. I enjoy this site and will be hanging around picking up pointers about Linux. This is something I need and want to learn. Thanks again

My boss ended up calling someone in to fix the problem and get the computer going.
I'm sorry we couldn't help you get this going fast enough.


I do not know what he did to resolve the issue
Any chance of just asking him?


I enjoy this site and will be hanging around picking up pointers about Linux. This is something I need and want to learn.
Good to hear. If you can set up your own system to test and tweak on. If you can't then running a Live CD will be OK for testing purposes.

(possible solution)

hi everyone

i had the same problem today, and after fiddling with all the drivers and xorg.conf's and agp configurations and everything, i was still getting the "no screens found" error. none of the solutions that i found worked, however, the problem was actually much more simple. the xserver-xorg installation was messed up, reinstalling the xserver-xorg package did it for me.

from what i have learnt through all the googling, if this doesn't work, the problem most likely seems to be an error in /etc/X11/xorg.conf , for example, if you have an ati card and you are using the "nv" driver in xorg.conf, you would get this error.

reinstall all the xorg packages and your graphics card's driver packages, reconfigure your xorg.conf, and if it still doesn't work, it might be a physical problem with the graphics card.