StartX fails on Dell Precision M6600 AMD Radeon HD 9600 series card

[ptyo]

I can't get startx to work on my laptop. below is what it is telling me.

(II) [KMS] drm report modesetting isn't supported.
(EE) RADEON(0): Chipset: "AMD Radeon HD 6900 Series" (ChipID = 0x6720) requires KMS
(EE) Screens(s) found, but none have a usable configuration.

my laptop has a 17 inch screen.. Any ideas?

[atreyu]

Is the mode being set at boot time? Look here:

cat /proc/cmdline

If you see any vga=XXX stuff, replace it with this in /etc/grub.conf and reboot:

 vga=normal nomodeset

Or if you don't want to touch /etc/grub.conf, just reboot, interrupt the boot process, and edit the kernel parameter line manually.

Maybe it will help, I'm just guessing.

[ptyo]

here is what i get when I run your command

#cat /proc/cmdline
BOOT_IMAGE=Linux ro root=801 vt.default_utf8=0

I'm new to linux..

[atreyu]

Perhaps it is built into the kernel? I dunno...it doesn't hurt to try anyway. Reboot and append the "vga=normal nomodeset" to the kernel command line. If it is Lilo and not Grub, I think you can just do "Linux vga=normal nomodeset" at the boot prompt. You can verify by checking for the grub.conf file, e.g.:

ls -l /boot/grub/grub.conf

If it's not there, you're probably using Lilo.

[ptyo]

I'm using Lilo.. i did edit the /etc/lilo.conf and put the vga=normal nomodeset

but still the same problem.

[atreyu]

Do you still have to run that command to update the MBR after modifying lilo.conf? I think it was 'lilo -s' but that was years ago...