Problem Booting, Need to Reset to Default Video Drivers

[sockopen]

Hi, I recently installed drivers for my ATI Radeon x1600 and I've been experiencing nothing but problems, first there was a few random green pixels on my screen; more visible on dark backgrounds. More and more pixels kept coming, now appearing in various colors; green, red and blue were the most popular colors... so I assumed that my video card was over-heating as more and more would appear over time, open up my case, and my video card is by no means hot... hardly warm and the fan is spinning.

Anyways, I tried to fiddle around not necessarily knowing what I was doing with this problem (live and learn, right?) so I went to System Settings, clicked on Monitor & Display, and under hardware I changed the driver for my ATI card in Administrator Mode trying to reset it to the default. Anyways, upon rebooting, the 'kubuntu' logo appears at the top and just before loading the login screen gives me a few errors on a black screen (they appear extremely quickly, can't read more than a word, or I would've Google'd the error or posted it here), then loads into a completely black screen where I can type to nothing (it's not a console, it's a blank screen that doesn't accept commands). I push the power button and the kubuntu logo appears and it shuts down properly. I can choose to boot into safe mode (console), I was blindly searching through folders looking for some options to fiddle around with and failed miserably.

Anyways, sorry for such a huge boring post, basically I believe I need to reset my video drivers to the default, whatever KDE starts with... I'm currently running Kubuntu's Live CD... can't even find my old files on this Live CD. Help please?

[penguin.ch]

Re: Problem Booting, Need to Reset to Default Video Drivers

can't even find my old files

O.k., first things first, then

Post the system's feedback to the console command fdisk -l ("minus ell"), and we'll help you searching ...

[sockopen]

Re: Problem Booting, Need to Reset to Default Video Drivers

I can't find them on the Live CD =P Everything is where it should be when I boot into the console, I just need to know what to edit to have my video drivers reset to the default... I think it's vesa / vesa.

[dibl]

Re: Problem Booting, Need to Reset to Default Video Drivers

upon rebooting, the 'kubuntu' logo appears at the top and just before loading the login screen gives me a few errors on a black screen

YES, that's the ATI performance that I remember so well! :P

Probably by "default" you mean "vesa" (there really isn't a default graphical mode, AFAIK).

It may be that when you're looking at that black screen with errors, you can do Ctrl-Alt-F1 and have a text console. If so, login in and then do the following:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

On the first screen choose "NO" for auto-detecting, and on the second screen choose "VESA" as the display type. Accept the defaults for the rest of the keyboard and mouse settings, pick your favorite resolution for the monitor, and refresh rates, and when you finish it will dump you back to the text prompt. Then enter

startx

and you should have a GUI to work with.

[penguin.ch]

Re: Problem Booting, Need to Reset to Default Video Drivers

I just need to know what to edit

[sudo] nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf

I'd give "ati" or "vesa" a try ... following the according section of my main machine's setup (for comparison only):

Section "Device"
   Identifier  "ATI Technologies, Inc. RV280 [Radeon 9200 PRO]"
   Driver    "ati"
   BusID    "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

--

Further reading: NANO docs

[sockopen]

Re: Problem Booting, Need to Reset to Default Video Drivers

Thank you very much guys, I'm back on my profile. <3

I still have randomly colored and placed dots on my screen though, it only concerns me because more and more keep appearing over time making me believe it's a heat problem.

[SheeEttin]

Re: Problem Booting, Need to Reset to Default Video Drivers

Sounds about right.

Even though it may not seem that hot, it probably is getting rather hot in your case.
Cooling can be affected by things like number of fans, fan sizes and speeds, cables obstructing air flow, room temperature, etc.
There are a few methods to find the temperature of your computer, including ACPI and lm-sensors.