Ok, I'm not sure exactly when this issue started but it was a few weeks ago, I had just installed Debian onto another partition but had left Gentoo (Grub) and its boot loader in place.

Anyway... now when I start my machine I get the nice Dell logo, then screen flashes and quickly switches to a blurry (wobbly/moving text) Grub menu. I choose Gentoo and it continues all the way through the boot process to a prompt with this wobbly screen.

As soon as I startx it clears up, I can then exit fluxbox and its as if nothing ever happened, the screen is clear.

Also, if at any stage during the boot process (or even at the grub menu) I switch my monitor off then back on, it comes back on crystal clear.

This seems to happen before Grub even kicks in, so I'm not sure what the issue may be.

Any one heard of anything like this? Need more info?

Perhaps there is a BIOS setting somewhere…
Perhaps the monitor cable is loose (don’t ask, but I’ve seen weird things happen)…

I often have this problem. I have not yet been able to determine the exact cause, though I expect it has something to do with the BIOS.

In my case, my machine gets "stuck" with the strange blurry screen.


I heard somewhere that it could be related to a USB device. Try unplugging your USB device and reboot to see if that makes a difference.

Otherwise, you can try changing some settings in your BIOS to see if you can figure out the cause (paying some attention to USB settings).

I also noticed that in my case, if I took out some RAM and rebooted, the problem went away. When I added back in the RAM, the problem didn't come back. A little extreme, and I can't explain why this is so... but you could give it a go.


Good luck!

Did you find a solution?