cant see, display is FUBAR

KenCo · 07-11-2004, 01:24 AM

thinkpad 600E,

I have reloaded SuSE 9.1 2 x's now, the display after boot looks like a mood ring lol

alt/ctl/backspace clears it so I can see for a few seconds.

I also tried "vga normal" and vga 640x480 in cmd line before boot but didnt help

any other cmd I can use to get into the system????

TYIA!

pcardout · 07-11-2004, 02:07 AM

I am guessing that the machine goes right to a GUI, but the GUI is trashed, so you can't "see".

Ctrl-Alt-F1 will bring back a text terminal even after your GUI has launched. (Wait for it to fully boot first ... just for grins).

If it's the text terminal itself that is trash, try typing "clear". Doesn't matter if you can't read it,
just hit enter!!

KenCo · 07-11-2004, 01:39 PM

hmm, those didnt work,

reloaded the sys and now it hangs at the "pcmcia" stage......

KenCo · 07-11-2004, 05:40 PM

removed PCMCIA modem and it boots into system,

how do I get PCMCIA to stop halting sys when plugging it in?

im a noob so any cmd line/boot edits need to be explained a bit

p.s.
how do I wipe all the config. etc files for a clean install if needed????

do fdisk /mbr and format /u work in Linux??? or what is cmd for programs like that?

pcardout · 07-12-2004, 12:51 AM

Linux has an fdisk which is much more powerful than the DOS fdisk. It's safe to mess w/ it as
it won't do anything until you tell it OK, but lets you poke around in your partitions.

Need to give it an argument, like fdisk /dev/hda (referring to your first AT hard drive) or
fdisk /dev/sda (referring to your first SCSI drive).

As to the rest, I hope you get additional help from the forum.