Here's the scoop. I was recently given a copy of Lycoris (Bleh nasty distro) and it worked perfectly however. I downloaded mandrake, then install and everything went smooth, however, I have not yet to be able to use a desktop such as GNOME, even though I was able to in Lycoris Once GNOME trys to start the graphics are all jumbled at the top, and the bottom is black, but I have a mouse. It didn't of course do this in Lycoris.

My video specs:
ATI Radeon 32 MB SDR

Samsung Samtron 55E (says that on the monitor itself but when linux probes it says 55B )

I have tried everything I could think of

I tried lower resolutions, higher resolutions, varying refresh rates, etc.
What really annoys me is it worked in Lycoris but not mandrake

Thanks in advance

-Skullikos-

1. Which ATI Radeon card are u using ?
2. What version of Mandrake are u using ?
2. Did you test the X server setup during installation of Mandrake ? In case you did not do this your /etc/XF86config may not be valid.

Lycoris uses the XFree86 4.2 , if you have an older version of Mandrake an older X server that does not support your card. Xfree86 supports ATI Radeons upto 8500 ( 2-d only).

Please provide the information I asked for, someone here may have a clue.

Here's the answers to your questions:

1. ATI Radeon 7200 32MB SDR
2. Mandrake 9.0
3. I tested the setup of the video and it worked great.

Hope this will help...
Thanks again

This is very interestng, during installation and setup the X worked perfectly. Now X does not work, btw you only said the gnome did not work, i hope you have also tried other desktop also.

In case the X server config is botched up, I'd recomend you try the following steps on a terminel
1. keep all the information about your video card, monitor handy. now run "xf86config" at the command prompt. A interactive session will start, answer all the information the program needs. At the end it'll ask if if want to save the new config file in the current directory, answer yes here( make sure this is your home directory, this is to ensure that the default XF86config-4 in /etc/X11 is kept safe)

2. now from the directory where you saved the new XF86config-4, run "XFree86 -xf86confg <file name>", hope fully this should start the X server and you should be able to see a test screen. If it does not work go back to step1 and see if any config was wrong

Step 1 and step2 does not require you to be root

3. now if step 2 was successful, do the following
su- ( become root)
cd /etc/X11
cp XF86Config-4 XF86Config-4.old ( backup the existing config file)
now copy the config file you generated in step 2 to /etc/X11/XF86Config-4

now do a startx , and test if you can load kde or gnome.

BTW make sure the you read the man pages of the commands I have describe above. If you can start the X server and start KDE, you can then start the mandrake conrol center and fine tune the X config.


best of luck.

Manas