I received my laptop by our system manager with three partitions, two occupied by windows and the third (approximatively half oh the HD) free. I downloaded the three iso images of the free version of Mandriva 2006, since I'm a Mandrake user from long time.

I've run the "tipical" installation of Mandriva instructing him of course to use the free space. He did it "succesfully". Then... no way to boot the kernel. The lilo showed 4 options, windows works fine but the three linux options (linux, failsafe and nonfb) all stops at the booting of the kernel. They freeze at the very first line "booting the kernel".

Then I've spent some time in this forum and around in internet with google and realized that many kernels on laptops have problems with the ACPI. Then I've "upgraded" my system disabling the ACPI (in the bootloader). Ok, it boots. But apparently he is not able to set correctly the video card.

I'm trying different settings of monitor and drivers... always getting just blank screen.

I've tried the following video cards (all with 3Dacc, that should be the correct one accordind to what I understand of my architecture):
Ati Radeon
Ati Radeon (fglrx)
Ati Radeon 8500

(the other Ati Radeon, fbdev, seems dangerous so I did not try it)

I've set the monitor and the resolution (trying both 16b and 24b) as 1680x1050.

Any suggestion? My computer is an ACER TravelMate 8104WLMi. The processor is a Centrino. Here is almost everything I know (even what I do not understand) on it, but if you want to know more... just ask:

- Intel Pentium M760 processor (2.0GHz, 533MHz FSB, 2MB L2 Cache)
- 15.4 WSXGA TFT LCD
- ATI MOBILITY RADEON X700 with 128MB
- 100GB HDD (5400rpm)
- DVD-Super Multi double layer (support DVD+R Double Layer/DVD+-RW)
- 1GB DDR2 533 (support dual channel)
- 802.11 a/b/g wireless LAN
- Bluetooth

Googled for the heck of it and all threads about getting any linux distro working on the particular laptop involved disabling pcmcia
http://www.linuxforum.com/forums/ind...&f=16&t=149755

My laptop is a TravelMate 4102WLMI. I encountered the same problem here. Disable ACPI and use VESA drivers for video, and set your screen resolution to 1024x768. If you connect your laptop to an external monitor, you will be able to use ATI drivers (fglrx) with a screen resolution of 1280x800. But it doesn't work on my TFT. I'm working on it.

After some tentative I finally managed with the vesa driver, as you suggested
But only at the very bad resolution 800x600

Anyway, that's now the last of my problems.

I'm in a mess with the USB devices

If I stick my "pen" in, nothing happens. If I stick the USB floppy drive....he thinks a lot, then create 8 (!) new directories in /mnt, named floppy, floppy1,... floppy 7. All empty, doesn't matter if a floppy disk is in or not. I wonder if my laptop is making fun of me

Well, anyway, if you find a way to fix that driver, let me know, I hate low resolutions!

And thanks!

Yesterday I tried the ATI drivers over and over again. I don't know why I did that. But now they work! I still don't have 3D, but a screen resolution of 1280x800 with 24bpp color is supported on my system. I guess Tux is having fun with me.

Well, I've no idea how you managed.

I tried here much and.... well aparently mandriva refuses to load the ATI proprietary driver since the driver requires xorg 6.8 and mandriva 2006 has "only" the 7.0 version (the package is labeled "only "6.9" but in fact it seems a 7.0 version).

No way, I will stay at 800x600....

What I did was to install the proprietary driver. It did not install as expected because I didn't have the kernel source. Though, I tried all the drivers with the names "ati" or "radeon" within them. Somehow Radeon(fglrx) worked for me then. At least for the larger screen resolutions. I just can't explain why that happened. But I was so happy with Mandriva that I joined the club and downloaded the PowerPack edition which comes with apropriate graphics drivers. If you want to hang on to Mandriva, I would recommend buying it. (Downloading 4 gigs on a 256 kbit ADSL connection took around 48 hours!) And now I rarely use WinXP.