A problem similar to mine was posted some time back, but no one posted a reply. I thought it worthwhile to describe the problem again, with my particular details:

I installed Fedora Core 3 on a Dell with a P-III, 900mghz processor, 256 megs ram, Dell M991 monitor, Intel 82810E 32 megs graphics controller.
The graphical login works properly. I installed Kde as my window manager. Everything loads up fine, but when I open any window, or any application, everything looks black. I have to run my mouse over the buttons in order for them to appear. When I open a terminal, the space where the text should be is black, and I can't highlight anything. Webpages load, but when I scroll (and its like this for application menus too) the original content stays on screen, and I have to highlight the text, or mouse over it in order for anything to be even partially readable.

What can I do to correct this? I suspect that it could be a video card problem. It doesn't seem to be a screen resolution problem, but it's hard to see anything on screen to be sure. If I need to install a new video driver, I am in a pickle, because I can't see anything to conduct the install, besides I would hardly know where to begin, since I am the newest newbie. Please tell me if I can provide more information to help troubleshoot. Oh, this is my third install; it comes out exactly like this every time. Linux seems to have my hardware correct, though.


Thank you very much in advance!

My suggestion is to try Knoppix or DSL (if you don't have broadband). Each live-cd will automatically configure your computer. If you don't encounter any problems related to your video card, you'll know the problem lies with the Fedora configuration. Good luck.

Thank you for your reply. I have used Knoppix, and it works fine. I have also had Mandrake 8.2 installed on my computer for a long time, and it works fine as well. I decided to give Fedora a whirl just to see how it would do. So, where do I go from here?

Have you tried to run any auto configuration applications? I do not know what comes with FC3, bu tmost distrubutions have there own HW detection applications - the graphics side of things is usually in it's own menu.

Open a text editor and look at /etc/X11/XF86Conf (or xorg.conf) and see what is listed for your graphics card. Also is HW acceleration enabled, that sort of thing.

I believe a working option left for you is to manually configure Xorg. The command is:
Xorg -configure

It will generate a file named xorg.conf.new, which you will have to edit. The following is an example of the sections of the file you'll need to edit:
Save the file as following:
mv xorg.conf.new /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Hey, thank you all. I'm up and running.