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

[Anne Wilson]

On 12/20/2011 02:33 PM, Anne Wilson wrote:
> 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.
> 
I have done another factory reset, using the same set of disks as I used
on the 1st December, giving me a satisfactory system.  This time the
display is messed up, exactly as I have been seeing it for the last few
days.  Conclusion?  The display card/chip or whatever is hosed.  Sadly,
it departs to the dissection bench :-)

Anne

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