[Wylug-help] Fwd: Laptop display problems - Radeon X600

[Anne Wilson]

On 12/20/2011 01:03 PM, Anne Wilson wrote:
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: James Holden <wylug at jamesholden.net>
> Date: 20 December 2011 10:50
> Subject: Re: [Wylug-help] Laptop display problems - Radeon X600
> To: wylug-help at wylug.org.uk
> 
> 
> On Sun, Dec 18, 2011 at 03:40:27PM +0000, Anne Wilson wrote:
>> I was asked to make a clean install of Windows XP and Mageia onto an
>> elderly laptop.  All was going well until I did some serious updating.
> 
> Firmware updating of some sort?
> 
Possible.

>> Mageia - after a full update, the display is lengthened to the point
>> where the KDE panel is off-screen.  I'm getting round that for now by
>> installing a second panel at the top.
> 
> Sounds like it's not detecting the screen properly. Is this the
> internal LCD? Do you know the native resolution?
> 
> Can you post the output of running "xrandr" in a terminal?
> 
> The output of "lspci" would be useful too.
> 
I'll see what's possible, though the screen is unreadable at normal text
sizes.

>> Windows XP - was fine until I did the SP3 update.  Now the display is
>> garbled, with all text dithered.  I tried restoring to before the
>> update, but the display is the same.  Is it possible that the update has
>> damaged the display card?  If necessary I'll go back to a clean install,
>> but the need for updates will remain.  I know that XP without SP3 is not
>> going to receive updates.
> 
> Hardware damage is very unlikely. Older ATI chipsets aren't
> supported by the latest ATI proprietary drivers on Linux. The
> same may be true for Windows.
> 
That does sound to be a possible reason - though it does beg the
question of whether using a Windows restore point should have taken me
back to the original drivers.  I've never had to rely on a restore point
before - have you (or anyone else) any experience regarding this?

>> This laptop is to be a fall-back only, so I'm reluctant to spend too
>> much time or money on it - it's already cost me over a day's work.  I
>> did wonder whether replacing the display card was feasible, but I've
>> never done that on a laptop.
> 
> Unlikely, I've never seen one as a separate card in a laptop.
> It's all very tightly integrated.
> 
>> Thoughts?
> 
> Well... if it's a fall-back, I'd feel inclined to restore it
> from the recovery partition if possible or put a bare-bones XP
> install on it so it minimally works and ebay it. Save the cash
> and buy a cheap laptop later down the line when you actually
> need a fall-back.
> 
I probably won't eBay it, but I will try to get it back to the barebones
install.  Either I'll get an emergency laptop or it will be ditched.

Anne


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