Black screen before the login Kubuntu 9.04 on PresarioV3000+ATI (SOLVED)

[Guest]

Dear all.
I have Presario V3000 with ATI video card.
Kubuntu 9.04 working for month with no problem.
Last day I download some ATI driver (don't remember the name) and install did not go well. Got some warning. After reboot kubuntu starts, loads, but goes black before login so I can not get to terminal or anything.
Tried ctrl+alt+F1, +F7 + backspace, nothing works.
The Ubuntu 9.04, kernel 2.6.28-11-generic (recovery mode) works, and get this reply after do the xfix overwriting xorg, but nothing happens, the problem remains.
The only thing I can do from there on is to pres power button to power down computer.
I need URGENT help form expert to tell me how to recover from this mess.
Thank you all!

[Chopstick]

Re: Black screen before the login Kubuntu 9.04 on PresarioV3000+ATI

I'm not exactly an expert, but I think I had a similar problem, when upgrading to 9.04 two days ago; I also have an ATI card.

As I understand the problem is that the new driver from ATI does not support some older (or not so old...) cards, but the install script and apt-get do not check if the driver actually supports the card.
If you are one of the unlucky people with older cards (like me), you will have to revert to the open-source driver. Unfortunately the new version of Xorg used by 9.04 is not compatible with the older ATI drivers (9.3 and lower, I think).

So what you can do is, you remove the ATI driver, and then you should automatically revert to the open-source driver. The easiest was to do this is to go into recovery mode, get the console and install 'envyng' (the text interface will be enough):

apt-get install envyng-core

Then start envyng by typing 'envyng -t'and choose option 4 (uninstall ATI driver).

You get into the console by pressing "Esc" during the grub-prompt at boot and then choosing "terminal with network" or something to that effect.
(I think you are already root when you do that, so you don't even need 'sudo')

I hope that helps... at least it worked for me...
Good Luck!

[Guest]

Re: Black screen before the login Kubuntu 9.04 on PresarioV3000+ATI

Dear Chopstick!

Your solution worked for me! Thank you!
I just got everything working back again. Now what I have to do is to restore the driver to it's original form so I can change visual effects back to extra. Any suggestions how to do this most easy?

Thank's again for the tip!

[Chopstick]

Re: Black screen before the login Kubuntu 9.04 on PresarioV3000+ATI (SOLVED)

Welcome.

You have to check whether your card is still supported by ATI (-> ATI website).
If it is, then maybe they have instructions on how to install it properly.
If it is not, as is the case for mine, then I'm afraid you are stuck with the open-source driver... as I am.

I would have to go back to 8.10 to use the ATI driver, but I don't know of any easy way to do this...
If anyone out there knows how to revert to 8.10 without having to reinstall everything, please tell me!

Oh, and mykind, I recommend you don't switch on desktop effects with OpenGL while you are on open-source drivers... my Desktop froze immediately and I had to switch it off in the .kderc config file because KDE would freeze immediately on startup...