Shutdown Display = Garbage

Forum: HD Install
Topic: Shutdown Display = Garbage
started by: jimbo62

Posted by jimbo62 on April 17 2005,23:13

I have DSL installed on my laptop hard drive. Everything works perfectly, except, when I select power down, the shutdown display is just garbage. No readable shutdown messages, just unreadable garbage.

Where can I set/reset the display resolution/color so that the shutdown messages are readable?

Thanks, jimbo

Posted by chickenman on April 20 2005,02:33

I often get this error on geexbox, but i dont think i've ever had it on DSL. Does it look like its trying to display a resolution higher than whats possabe, or does it look like a big smudge of colours with patches of words -but you cant read them?

I've had both, although its probably completly diffrent. I think Geexbox has an error clearing the screen of whats allready there. So it chucks the words on top, then some parts are inverted and colours scrambled.

Posted by jimbo62 on April 20 2005,15:11

Thanks for your reply. The screen looks like the wrong video mode is being used. Blocks of colors, no obvious text. I can see what should be text being written, but it is just writing various blocks of color.

And when DSL shuts down, the top half of the screen usually shows the last half screen of startup text, then below that it starts with the shut down messages. The whole screen is garbled. But, the startup mesages are just fine at startup.

Thanks, jimbo

Posted by ke4nt1 on April 20 2005,15:21

search the forums for adding something like the command
" vga=normal " to your lilo.conf file..

I'm not sure from memory where it is to be placed in the file,
or , it may be a vga=xxx ( some 3 digit number ) command.
Again, not sure from memory, but I have seen it posted..

Remember to rerun lilo after you make changes to the file.

Let us know if it works for you.

73
ke4nt

Posted by jimbo62 on April 20 2005,21:09

Yes, I already have vga=normal in lilo.conf. It can go as a global parameter or be specific to one of the boot systems. I have two linux systems, DSLinux and Puppy, so I am using the vga=x??? specific to the system, just after the "image=x???" line.

Thanks, jimbo

[QUOTE]search the forums for adding something like the command
" vga=normal " to your lilo.conf file..

I'm not sure from memory where it is to be placed in the file,
or , it may be a vga=xxx ( some 3 digit number ) command.
Again, not sure from memory, but I have seen it posted..

Remember to rerun lilo after you make changes to the file.

Let us know if it works for you.

73
ke4nt[QUOTE]

Posted by chickenman on April 21 2005,03:02

the vga=7xx commands can be found as so:
Press the F2 key for more options at the start of booting DSL (when you input boot options)
Then press F3 (it actually tells you this in the F2 options)

Note: that its not vga=x???, rather vga=xxx but since the first "x" is always a 7 they put vga=7xx (it really peeved me the first time i used this and i put in 787 as the code so i did a: "vga=7787", i wish they'd just say vga=xxx)

On a side point, I found that just pressing F3 at the boot options prompt gives you the old KNOPPIX list of boot commands

I dont know that this will fix your problem though, as if "vga=normal" dosn't then it might not be a resolution problem. Possably setting it to the same resolution as your running resolution would fix it -working on the dumb theory that it is a "changing resoltion" problem. (I should be shot for that idea)

well, good luck.