Strange distortion appears when scrolling, etc
 

My version of Linux is Mandrake Linux 10.1.

Mandrake linux starts fine and everything seems to work, however when I'm scrolling down windows or moving my mouse over buttons, I get a strange distortion.
I get strange flickering pixels/lines when moving my mouse over buttons or scrolling down a window, especially when scrolling down a window. The flickering lines stuff appears on the window itself, and to the right, but not on the left.

I've tried changing the monitor settings to "Generic 1280x1024 @ 60hz", "Generic 1280x1024 @ 74hz", "Generic 1080x1024 @ 76hz", "Generic flat panel 1280x1024", and the flickering line stuff still appeared.

I tried setting the screen resolution to 1024x768, and the flickering line stuff didn't appear then. However, I know this monitor works well at 1280x1024.

My monitor is 17" and the recommended resolution for it is 1280x1024.

In the screen resolution part of the Mandrakelinux Control Center, the only colour option available is 16 million colours (24bits).

When I first installed Linux, I had it working fine in 1280x1024 without any distortion like this. I did a fresh install, and that's when this problem started. I'm not sure how to solve it.

Does anyone have any suggestions to solving this problem?

Sorry for the long post.

Don't worry about the long post as long as it is readable and makes sense. The more information the better! :)

As for your problem, it could be a problem with the graphics card driver that you are using? You have mentioned that the display works fine at a lower resolution, which may suggest that the driver is unable to handle higher resolutions correctly. Just a thought. What graphics card do you have, and what driver do you have installed? And is this same one that you used when installing the first time?

Something else it *could* be is the monitor, depending on how old it is?

The monitor is pretty new. I got it about two months ago.

My graphics card is an ATI Radeon 9000. I'm not sure what driver I have installed, though. How do I check that?

I can't think of anything I did differently when installing Linux the first time. To me it seems as if everything I've been doing is the same. Maybe there's something I'm not remembering, but I'm not sure about that.

Also, in case this is worth mentioning, I use 1280x1024 in windows 2000 and Windows Me, and it works fine in those.

I had a feeling you would say that. :)

You can check the graphics card from the Mandriva Control Centre (MCC), under the hardware tab on the left hand side. Check that the card matches exactly, and that there are no options you need to enable.

I'm afraid that I have no experience with ATI Radeon 9000 cards, so can't confirm what you need to use. It may be worth searching the site for previous posts with that card to see if:

a). Someone else has a similar problem

b). There is a guide to setting up the card correctly in Mandriva

I'm almost convinced it is the graphics card, if your certain the monitor's settings are also correct. I have known to be wrong though. :)

I use a ATI Radeon 9000 w/ Mandrake 10.1 using the default RADEON (fglrx) driver that is packaged with Mandrake and have had no problems. My initial though would be that the refresh rate on the monitor driver you've selected in xf86config (or in Graphical Server area of Control Center) may be too high. I know to get my monitor to work properly using 1280 x 1024 @ 60Hz or else I had a jittery display. Alternatively, you can upgrade your 10.1 using URPMI or Update Packages in the CC to get the latest Xorg packages and then download the proprietary driver from www.ATI.com for Xorg 6.8.0 and see if that helps.

Just my thoughts.

~Drakkath

Okay. After reading your post, I looked in the control center, and I didn't see "Graphical Server" anywhere. I looked around the control center, and I didn't find anything which I could use to change the refresh rate. Is there another way of changing the refresh rate, and if so, can you instruct me on how to use it?

Goto Kicker (the Star) -> System -> Configuration -> Configure your computer. Then within the control center click Hardware on the left hand pane and then select Graphical servers from the list.

If for some reason it doesn't exist there you can press CTRL + ALT + F1 and log in as root then use drakconf for a text based configurator. However, you will have to restart X for settings to take effect.

If none of those work you can log in a terminal as root use xorgconfig, although I really hate that method and have since my first Linux experience with RedHat 5.2 =)

Anyway, good luck!