Thrown back into login screen

[Tayzirov]

Hey y'all.

I'm relatively new to linux and all that is open source, and I've concluded that my problem is probably related to my noobism.
Okay here's my problem. I have an old PC that I wanted to use as a linux box. It's got 2 gb DDR ram, 2.4 GHz Celeron.

My problem is basically that when I boot for the first time after a fresh installation and setup, I am always stuck at the login screen or thrown back to it. No matter what account I log onto, whether it's 'root' or any other user account I have setup, it would attempt logging in, black out the screen, turn my monitor off then on again and I'm back at the login screen. This is all using the graphical interface of course.

I'm having this same problem with all the linux distributions that I've tried so far:
Gnome
Sabayon
Mandriva 2010 - I've even tried changing all the different boot environments, and same problem
Open Solaris
and Ubuntu won't even install. It just sits at the loading screen.

Why would this happen? I've tried all these OS's on my regular PC, which is a dual core, 4 gb of ram, and they've worked perfectly. So why wouldn't it run properly on that other PC?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions or guidance.

[GNU-Fan]

Howdy,

Gnome is no Linux distribution, but a desktop environment. (Responsible for the giving everything the same look etc.) It runs on top of the X Window software, which provides the low level functionality for displaying stuff.

OpenSolaris is no Linux distribution either, so it is very interesting that it shows the same problems.
However it uses X as GNU/Linux does.

The first step should be to find out whether X causes this or the problem is at a higher level.
Switch with Ctrl+Alt+F1 to the text mode and type this:
less /var/log/Xorg.0.log

This gives you the logfile of the last time X started. It is very technical but also the messages are written in plain English, so you will maybe find a pointer to the problem.

[reed9]

Yeah, it sounds like X is crashing. But the live CDs are all working ok? It's just after an install?

Can you boot a live CD and post the output of

/sbin/lspci | grep -i vga

[Tayzirov]

sorry for not replying sooner, i was trying to install fedora this time, and when I tried to boot it, it gave me the grub> command line and when i entered boot, it says "Kernel must be loaded before booting". Shouldn't the Kernel have self-installed during the installation process?