I have Windows Vista SP1 dual-booted with Linux Mint, I have a HP G60 notebook with 249GB of disk space and 3.00 GB of Memory. Let me know if you'd like to know anything else about my hardware and I'll look for it.


So anyway, I recently installed Linux Mint again after having to format just yesterday. Everything went fine and there were no errors, but as soon as I boot up into it and login I get a completely blank screen where I can only see my mouse pointer. However Vista works fine.

If anyone can do anything about this problem it would be really helpful. It's pretty frustrating.

Thanks.

What window manager are you using? What version of Mint did you install? Tell us some more information on your circumstance.

Oh, sorry.

I am using Version 7 and I don't really understand what you mean by window manager but I guess it would be Whichever one came with it if there's a default.

What graphics card do you have? If you can load the Mint CD and open a terminal and enter: sudo lspci or sudo su lspci you should get that info.

I don't have my CD, I threw it away after I installed it and now I have no clue where it is sorry.

However I do think it has to do with the graphics card cause I tried to get to the terminal after a logged in I pressed CTRL+ALT+F2. I was hoping to find something in /var/log/ maybe but it just kept flashing stuff on the top of the screen then I pressed CTRL+ALT+F2 and the entire screen started flashing, I do believe it's the graphics card. I would just uninstall mint but the problem is I don't wanna delete the GRUB so if anyone knows an easier way than just deleting the partitions please let me know. Also do you think this will happen on other distros if I try again?

I don't know what you are asking here, an easier way to what? You can boot vista right? Whether this happens with other distros??? If you knew your graphics card you could check a hardware compatibility list. The surest way to know if a distro will work is to download a Live CD and run it as a live CD before installing.

If you want to re-install the vista bootloader and you have your vista CD:

Boot up from Vista Installation DVD and select Repair Your Computer option (its below Install Icon). Select Windows Vista -- Command Prompt.
Execute this at command prompt:
Code:
bootrec.exe /fixmbr
bootrec.exe /fixboot

that's supposed to work according to microsoft.

Assuming you have a way to download and burn iso files to CD/DVD, I would download and burn the System Rescue CD. This way, in the future, if you ever have issues with your computer, you can boot up with the rescue CD and make your fixes that way.

The rescue CD would also be useful for situations like this where you could execute lspci and provide us with that info.


If you no longer care for Linux Mint, do the following:
1. record onto a piece of paper the contents of the file /boot/grub/menu.lst; all you really care about at this point is the section that deals with booting Windows; it will look somewhat like

title Windows
rootnoverify (hdX,X)
chainloader +1


If you ever want to try a different Linux distribution, just install it over Linux Mint, i.e. install it on the same partition that Linux Mint resides on. Then just modify /boot/grub/menu.lst to be able to also boot into Vista.

I recommend you give a few attempts to try to resolve the graphics issue however. Use this forum to guide you.

OK, Thanks for all the help so far.




I am asking if there's an easier way to make this work if the graphics card is the problem without deleting the whole partition.


Also I managed to get my graphics card from my laptop manual:

intel graphics media accelerator 4500M


I googled it and I found some compatibility problems with it. So I guess that is the problem.



So do I have any options here other than just deleting the whole partition?

Bump...........

login to vista download a ext2 filesystem driver for windows and install it
your should now be able to access your linux partition from windows
navigate to Z:\etc\X11 (replace Z with the new drive)
and post your Xorg.conf