"No screens found" and "Kwin is unstable" [SOLVED]

[yamikuronue]

I'm not the newest newbie on the block, but I'm entirely unused to the command-line, so I figured I'd post here.

Short version: I suddenly developed issues with "No screens found" when trying to startx. The only way I've found to get it to boot into kde is to not specify a video driver, primarily by renaming xorg.conf and letting it use the defaults. Even using "ati" or "radeon" won't work - then I get "no driver found". So, okay. I'm in kde. But then the issue I can't seem to solve occurs - "Kwin is unstable", it tells me, "It appears to have crashed repeatedly." It offers me the chance to switch to using "kwin" - no other options, of course. Meanwhile I have no title bars nor keyboard input.

Searching mostly reveals this occurring after upgrading kubuntu using fglrx drivers. I was using proprietary drivers, but as I mentioned, I'm getting this issue letting xorg.conf use the defaults.

Additional info: I've got a Radeon card, 3650 IIRC, as well as "Integrated Graphics". My bios will let me switch between the two but neither fixes the issues (though Integrated makes the command line run at a higher resolution). I believe it may have run out of power while suspended to RAM (or possibly while suspending to RAM, it may not have finished - I was in a hurry to get home from class).

Currently using: "Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller"

ETA: Oh yeah, running Karmic.

[Untitled]

Re: "No screens found" and "Kwin is unstable"

By your description it sounds like you're running ThinkPad T500. The fglrx drivers should work with Radeon 3650 but it sounds like something has gone wrong there.
First, make sure that in your bios the settings that enables changing the video driver through the OS is disabled. When it's enabled the graphic card defaults to Intel which messes up fglrx. Also set your graphic card to use the discreet card rather than the integrated graphics.
Then, log into recovery mode and run

sudo aticonfig --initial

this should generate a new xorg.conf for you to work with the ATI card. Then restart (or just startx) and see this improves things.

[yamikuronue]

Re: "No screens found" and "Kwin is unstable"

I am indeed using a thinkpad T500. Switching is disabled - I did that when I first installed the drivers.

I was using fglrx until... I have no idea what happened, but they stopped working. I was hoping if I could get into kde I could reinstall the drivers, but kwin won't let me, so mrr.

aticonfig..... seems to have worked! Gave me a heart attack that all my personalization was gone until I realized I was logged in as root from the recovery mode. A quick restart and it works. Thanks so much.

I have a sneaking suspicion when it died during suspend my bios somehow defaulted back to the other card, and it was my messing around with xorg before I noticed that stopped my changing it back from working. Does that sound plausible? I really have no idea how the switchable graphics is supposed to work on this machine, since i've never used it (it came with Vista, which I left on just long enough to download kubuntu).

[Untitled]

Re: "No screens found" and "Kwin is unstable"

Glad to hear it's working again!

What you say sounds reasonable, although it never happened to me, but I can see how changing cards can confuse things when using proprietary ATI drivers.

The idea behind the switchable graphics is that you can switch between the less powerful but less power consuming Intel drivers when you want them (e.g. when using battery) and the more capable ATI drivers when you want them (e.g. when gaming).

Since I have my laptop docked and connected to two screens I am bound to use ATI since the Intel drivers cannot drive two screens. In Vista, I hear, you can switch the graphic card while the computer is running, but I had the Kubuntu disc ready when buying the computer, so I didn't even run it once...

By the way, unless you are a gamer, I think that the open source drivers work better than fglrx, especially in Lucid. Resizing a window, for instance, doesn't take forever and so on...

[yamikuronue]

Re: "No screens found" and "Kwin is unstable"

I've had issues with the GPU overheating using the open source drivers. Last time I reinstalled my GPU was around 100C until I installed the proprietary one.

[yamikuronue]

Re: "No screens found" and "Kwin is unstable"

My computer took a little bit of a tumble today - it dropped a few inches, giving me a heart attack and activating the internal motion sensors enough to shut it down. When I booted up, everything seems fine except...

"Kwin is unstable".

WTF. I checked the bios - it's still on "Discrete graphics". I deleted xorg.conf and ran aticonfig --initial. No change.

It occurs to me that it had been wanting me to reboot after installing some updates - could a package update have caused this? Maybe it's unrelated to the drop.

EDIT: Nevermind me. I reinstalled (took me a while to find where I'd saved the driver install file) and it came right back. Some update had messed with my driver settings I guess.