Okay, I've finally gotten Red Hat 8.0 working perfectly on my desktop, so now im moving onto my laptop. You guys have helped me tons with the desktop installation. I've searched around on here and on the 'linux on laptops' page, but haven't found anything that has quite matched my specific problem...

I used the same 8.0 cd's that i used on my desktop. When the installation was finished, the screen was contained to only a 6x6 inch square in the center of the monitor.. When i hooked up an external monitor everything worked fine.

I read another person's log of a RH installtion on an Inspiron and it said to pick the monitor: Generic LCD Panel 1024x768.

I didn't see that option so i picked: Generic Laptop 1024*768

Also, the graphic login was all scrambled.

Now this laptop is one i got from someone else it had winME on it and was not working at all. It would boot with errors and was EXTREMELY slow. I attributed this to windows and hoped to fix it with linux.

here are the specs:

PIII 800MHz
256M RAM
Factory Video
DVD/CD drive.
Ethernet...etc.

thanks in advance for the help.

p.s. should this be in another foruM? i couldn't decide.

Do you remember what the installation defaulted to for a monitor? If you are installing on a laptop it should definetly have chosen some sort of LCD screen.

when it probed for a monitor it said: no monitor found.
and again when it prompted me to pick one i picked:
Generic Laptop....etc.

Gotcha. Okay a few more questions. Have you been able to update all your packages? I believe that there is a newer version of X then the one that was provided in RedHat 8.0.

What is the model number on your Inspiron? Judging by the processor speed it would seem that this is not exactly a brand new laptop. I would think that RedHat 8.0 would be able to probe your monitor automatically but apparently that is not so.

I have RedHat 8.0 installed on my Laptop and I ran into a few problems as well. The answers are out there they are just hard to find.

show i should burn an updated install cd onmy desktop and use that?

i could try that. it makes sense. and it's a inspiron 4000.. not at all new.

thanks for your help by the way.

Okay after some digging around I found this which leads to that. On the first link check out the section titled X. The second link is a link to a supposed Xconfiguration file that works on the Inspiron 4000.

Let me know if it works out.

im reinstalling right now, so i should know if that works in about 45 min or so...in the meantime. i can understand how a new XF86Config file would keep X from crashing, but could that change the size of the viewable screen as well? even in text mode its still confined to a 6*6 inch square..

The XF86Config file CONTROLS how X behaves. Thats like saying I can't understand why a new engine would make a car work.(Not trying to be a smart a$$ just trying to make a bad analogy. Acid_Kewpie is rubbing off on me.)

okay, it did the same thing. X crashed. here's the error log:

EE R128(0): No Display subsection in Screen section "Screen0" for dept

EE Screen(s) found, but none have a usable configuration

Fatal server error:
no screens found



???

i changed the XF86Config file to that one that apparently matches the inspiron 4000. i backed up the old file but i think the errors were basically the same with it as well.

and whenever i run the Xconfigurator it says:
dcc probe returned with gobus values
id: none
name: none
horizsync: none
vertsync: none

Did you try updating X?

i rebooted. what else do i need to do? i switched into text mode and tried to startx.

sorry but im a newb. you have to excuse me....

Try this command:

rpm -qa | grep XFree86

This will tell you what version of XFree86 you are using. If you don't have the newest version you could go to www.xfree86.org and download the necessary files.

okay, i'll update the file cuz i have an older version. ill have to wait until i get home and can burn it to cd though, cuz it's too big for a floppy. thanks again for all your help.