Video Card Troubles

[dellwood]

Hi,

For Christmas today I received a new monitor, memory update, and video card for my computer. The memory and monitor installed fine, but after installing the video card and drivers, we re-started, seeing the dell boot-up screen as well as the windows xp boot-up screen, and then the screen went black instead of going to the login screen. The installations we made today include:

-2 1gb ram cards (are they called cards?) from dell
-SE198WFP 19-inch Wide-screen Flat Panel LCD Monitor
-Radeon® X1300 256 MB PCI Graphics Card

All three were recommended by dell as compatible parts for my Dell Dimension 3000, so thats probably not the problem. We've installed the correct drivers off the cds as well. Do we need to update the drivers (this early?) ?. Anyway, any help is very appreciated, merry Christmas!

EDIT: Running xp (service pack 3) if that helps at all. And the video card is being connected to the monitor with a two-way monitor adapter (only one slot take), not sure if this matters but can't hurt to say it.

-dellwood

[syedhs]

Probably the new monitor doesn't have matching existing desktop resolutions.

If you can still boot-up screen ie BIOS, then you need to press F8 before the Window XP Splash screen appear and then select the VGA mode. Try lower resolution and reboot.

[nikki]

I know I'm not helping, but I wanted to ask, do you have Ubuntu on the same computer? You're going to run it with the X1300?

[betajaen]

Probably the new monitor doesn't have matching existing desktop resolutions.

If you can still boot-up screen ie BIOS, then you need to press F8 before the Window XP Splash screen appear and then select the VGA mode. Try lower resolution and reboot.

I'm pretty sure all new flat-panel screens can adjust themselves to strange resolutions; they just scale the image. I know mine can.

I would argue that the old graphics card drivers wasn't uninstalled (or not uninstalled properly), causing a conflict with the new ones, especially if the original graphics card was from a different GPU manufacture (i.e. nVidia). But if the OP can get into safe mode, then it's a driver problem - which is easily fixable.

[syedhs]

Probably the new monitor doesn't have matching existing desktop resolutions.

If you can still boot-up screen ie BIOS, then you need to press F8 before the Window XP Splash screen appear and then select the VGA mode. Try lower resolution and reboot.

I'm pretty sure all new flat-panel screens can adjust themselves to strange resolutions; they just scale the image. I know mine can.

It had happened to me and I fixed it exactly the way I mentioned above, but yep, you got me: it is an analog monitor.

[dellwood]

We've got it to work un-installing in safe mode and re-installing in normal mode, but then when we tried to add a monitor, it reverted to what it was doing earlier, so we went back to one screen ( that's all I'll be using soon anyway).

I would argue that the old graphics card drivers wasn't uninstalled (or not uninstalled properly), causing a conflict with the new ones, especially if the original graphics card was from a different GPU manufacture (i.e. nVidia). But if the OP can get into safe mode, then it's a driver problem - which is easily fixable.

We have kept the default graphics card (for now) simply because it was to our understanding that was what was enabling the GUI in safe mode. We are scared that if we remove that and it still malfunctions, there will be no way to correct the problem, but what your saying seems to make more sense the default driver is the Intel(R) 82865G Graphics Controller , and the other two drivers are the VisionTek Raedon x1300 and VisionTek Raedon Secondary x1300 (for duel screens).

know I'm not helping, but I wanted to ask, do you have Ubuntu on the same computer? You're going to run it with the X1300?

After I get a new hard drive (currently it's 37gb ) with the money I saved up, yes, I'll be switching Ubuntu from my parents system (currently duel-booting with xp) to the primary (and only) OS on mine... at least I hope { is it not compatiable?? I haven't had time to check, all I know is was made to be compatible with the Dell }.

Anyway, thanks for the feedback .

EDIT: I'll probably staying with GNOME for the time being, so all I should have to do is switch to raedon's free drivers -- right?


-dellwood

[nikki]

EDIT: I'll probably staying with GNOME for the time being, so all I should have to do is switch to raedon's free drivers -- right?

AFAIK, if it works on GNOME it'll work on anything Xorg. X1300 is a little old, but it might work, try it out. There's no better way than to check it for yourself.