Hi
I'm a newbie to this forum but I thought I'd share the solution to the problem I had installing Suse 9.1 on my laptop (PIII Compaq Armada M700).

I scrubbed the XP sp2 install and formatted the whole disk (12gig) with the Suse install disk. All went well and the install completed ok.

However when I booted up the screen had coloured horizontal bands on it and no destop was displayed. I tried Fn/F4 button to toggle the display and briefly the kde desktop was displayed. It then faded out again!

Alot of people seem to have had the same, or similar issue.

I tried all different configurations in Sax2 but to no avail.
Apparently, if I had have plugged in a crt this may have helped me here...

Anyhow, after much pulling of hair and no luck with various tips on Linux forums web wide, I reinstalled the whole system again.

This time I stopped at the Yast screen configure section of the install and set the screen to ATI 3D rage mobilityn AGP2x as per default selection, but I set the monitor to VESA 800x600 60hz 16bit. Everything worked fine and the desktop came up perfect (albeit a bit big and ugly).

I then got on the net, ran all the update patches and made sure everything was ok.

After I was able to reset the screen to VESA 1024x768 60hz and its fine and looks great. (I don't have to close the lid, or flip the FnF4 button, or settle for generic LCD settings etc)

Yast2 rocks and Suse 9.1 is brilliant.

I hope this helps anyone who has had a simiiar problem.

Kieran

Strange, I'm also using an M700 and have never had a problem setting up the display.

weird huh

seems there are a few people out there with the similiar issues

I think it all boils down to the Hz setting, i think 60hz is fine, but on my 1st install I reckon it got set to 75Hz and it was LCD not VESA. (could be the mother of red herrings though)

I now get a funny message about axis size but I simply ignore it and theres no problem.

Some other suggestions out there ranged from

" start suse with the monitor shut" , "try LCD generic"

to "start in non graphics mode and type startx" etc etc

Any old ways, alls we'll that end well

next task is to get my Wireless PCMIA card to work

The m700 runs really well on Suse though, it was dying a death with XP2.

K