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October 28th, 2004 17:00
Dell Inspiron 5160 video problems while installing Fedora C2 Linux, HELP!
Hi,
I just bought a Dell Inspiron 5160 laptop with WinXP HE preinstalled. The system is :
- Mobile Pentium® 4 Processor 518 w/HT Technology (2.80GHz, 533MHz FSB)
- 15 inch XGA LCD Panel
- 1G RAM
- Video card: 32MB DDR XGI® Volari™ XP5 AGP 4X Graphics
- BIOS: A5 (This is the latest that dell has for this model).
I used Partition Magic to resize and repartition the 80G drive and installed
Fedora Core 2.
I had problems from the get go: during installation the video was all smudged
and shadowy with a lot of black pixels so I couldn't even read most of the installation
screens.
So I went to text installtion and installed successfully and system boots but
with text only. No GUI.
After a lot of struggle and hand editing my "/etc/X11/xorg.conf" file I got
the GUI to come up but still it's very smudgy and impossible to view
like you can read the very large size font with diffucutly and you can
see X-ray like shadows of the icons and images. Cleary this is not what I was
hoping for for my investment.
I tried to go to the XGI website xgitech, for linux drivers but they point
you to the Dell website, which by the way has no information whatsoever about
the systtem, I mean technical stuff like appropriate Vsync and Hsync rates, etc.
So my Questions are:
1) Has any one successfully installed FC2 on Inspiron 5160 with GUI? and if
so please post how you resolved the LCD problem?
2) If Not , can I install another flavor of linux that is known to work on this system?
and which one?
3) If non of the above, does this mean it's money down the drain and I won't be
able to use linux on my laptop ever, or what should I do to to achieve that.?
Below are portions of my xorg.conf (that I thought maybe relevent) if it helps:
I really appreciate any help. ThanX in advance.
Leopard____.
PS. The system works perfectly well in XP in the dual boot mode. Alos works fine in
text only mode with Fedora2.
>>>>>>>>
Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Default Layout"
Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0
InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor0"
VendorName "Monitor Vendor"
# ModelName "CPD-E200"
DisplaySize 330 240
HorizSync 30.0 - 60.0
VertRefresh 48.0 - 60.0
Option "dpms"
EndSection
Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard0"
Driver "vesa"
VendorName "Videocard vendor"
BoardName "VESA VBE 2.0"
EndSection
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Videocard0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 24
Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
EndSection
<<<<<<<<<<<<
I just bought a Dell Inspiron 5160 laptop with WinXP HE preinstalled. The system is :
- Mobile Pentium® 4 Processor 518 w/HT Technology (2.80GHz, 533MHz FSB)
- 15 inch XGA LCD Panel
- 1G RAM
- Video card: 32MB DDR XGI® Volari™ XP5 AGP 4X Graphics
- BIOS: A5 (This is the latest that dell has for this model).
I used Partition Magic to resize and repartition the 80G drive and installed
Fedora Core 2.
I had problems from the get go: during installation the video was all smudged
and shadowy with a lot of black pixels so I couldn't even read most of the installation
screens.
So I went to text installtion and installed successfully and system boots but
with text only. No GUI.
After a lot of struggle and hand editing my "/etc/X11/xorg.conf" file I got
the GUI to come up but still it's very smudgy and impossible to view
like you can read the very large size font with diffucutly and you can
see X-ray like shadows of the icons and images. Cleary this is not what I was
hoping for for my investment.
I tried to go to the XGI website xgitech, for linux drivers but they point
you to the Dell website, which by the way has no information whatsoever about
the systtem, I mean technical stuff like appropriate Vsync and Hsync rates, etc.
So my Questions are:
1) Has any one successfully installed FC2 on Inspiron 5160 with GUI? and if
so please post how you resolved the LCD problem?
2) If Not , can I install another flavor of linux that is known to work on this system?
and which one?
3) If non of the above, does this mean it's money down the drain and I won't be
able to use linux on my laptop ever, or what should I do to to achieve that.?
Below are portions of my xorg.conf (that I thought maybe relevent) if it helps:
I really appreciate any help. ThanX in advance.
Leopard____.
PS. The system works perfectly well in XP in the dual boot mode. Alos works fine in
text only mode with Fedora2.
>>>>>>>>
Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Default Layout"
Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0
InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor0"
VendorName "Monitor Vendor"
# ModelName "CPD-E200"
DisplaySize 330 240
HorizSync 30.0 - 60.0
VertRefresh 48.0 - 60.0
Option "dpms"
EndSection
Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard0"
Driver "vesa"
VendorName "Videocard vendor"
BoardName "VESA VBE 2.0"
EndSection
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Videocard0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 24
Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
EndSection
<<<<<<<<<<<<
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Nospoonzz
29 Posts
0
October 30th, 2004 00:00
Back in the day I used to run an Inspiron 8200 with SuSE Linux. Version 8. or 9.0 I forget. Anyways That Inspiron 8200 had a Geforce4Go 64meg card and I had no problems at all whatsoever with that notebook. The day I got it I became a dual booter. I had installed Windows 2000 Pro on one partition and Linux on the other. I ran the most popular games at the time under Linux. Games like RTCW, UT, Q3, UT2003 and so on. Now I find it just so much easier and so simple to just stick with Windows XP Pro. There are drivers for everything. I just have too many things to do to be spending my time editing this and that and looking for this driver or that driver. Just my 2 cents.
AtlanticWorks
5 Posts
0
November 12th, 2004 12:00