jt1990

Hi all...

I'm not sure if this is the place to post this, but I figured it was as good a place as any...

I installed PCLinuxOS 2009 on a desktop of mine yesterday, and here's my issue:

When I installed it, I had to install using the Videosafemodevesa (or whatever that's supposed to be) otherwise, it just locked up. Now, booting from the hard disk, when I go to put in my password info, at some point in the process (yesterday it was putting in the first character in the root password confirmation, today it's putting the first or second character in the user account password) it locks up. Does anybody have any idea what's going on?

warwickboy

It sounds like the o/s is having a bit of trouble with your graphics card configuration. Is this an old PC?

jt1990

It is on the older side...P4 2.8GHz, 1GB RAM, and the video adapter is crap...an old integratged intel adapter...I was under the impression that Linux doesn't take too much video power...Is this impression wrong?

warwickboy

No, it's not wrong. Linux, like most operating systems, should run with any graphics device that it recognises. Normally this will result in a basic graphic display that can be manipulated/enhanced through drivers.

I wouldn't say that your PC is "old" as such. When I use that term, I refer to machines that would have been around at the time of Windows 98 and before (i.e. PIII/II machines or AMD K6 and earlier).

Without having any more detail, it sounds like the install has had issues with the basic graphics capability of your machine.

Normally I try another o/s (I find one of the low profile offerings such as Puppy do fine). Otherwise, there may have been something that was missed in the install. I'm not an expert on PCLinux (hopefully someone else on here is), but in any case I would recommend a devoted video card whichever o/s you intend to install. This will most likely be an AGP card in your case, though I have seen P4 rigs with PCI express capability. Check your motherboard.

So, in summary:

1. Try a live CD of a different Linux to determine whether this is a better suit for your graphics;
2. Get a separate graphics card installed. You don't have to spend much on this - places like eBay always have cheap cards available that are better than the built-in jobs.

Do you know which motherboard is installed? This will help others (and me) to determine what onboard graphics you have and we can work out a lot more from that info.