[SOLVED] Bottom-half of my screen is black

[Shugotenshi_X]

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Hello,

I just installed Ubuntu on my old IBM, but in the graphical environment, the bottom-half of my screen is black. I tried running the the x-server configuration with:

sudo dpkg-rconfigure xserver-xorg

No luck though. I also ran all of the updates available, (without changing anything for repositories) and nothing changed. The full screen shows up in the command prompt no problem.

If anyone has any input, I'd greatly appreciate it.

Thanks for the help,

[jmadero]

Which version of Ubuntu? What graphic card? How old is this computer? Sorry but this information will help out a lot in diagnosing your computer. If it's a really old machine I wouldn't suggest putting Ubuntu on it as it's a heftier distro of Linux. There are other versions which work much better on older machines. If it's not "that old" then maybe you should try a different version of Ubuntu (8.04 is the last LTS - long term support - release of Ubuntu, I would suggest this version, if you already have this one installed then try Intrepid).

[Shugotenshi_X]

Thanks for the reply.

I'm runnin' Intrepid, processor = PII, 300 - 400 MHz (when overclocked, woot!). Age of machine = 1997/98? IBM "Personal Computer 300PL".

I'm not worried about the heftiness of Ubuntu on this machine, as I've loaded Fluxbox (using GDM at the moment) while making other adjustments, and even so, it runs great. Forgot to mention in my last post it's an integrated video chipset. lspci says:

VGA compatible controller: S3 Inc. Trio 64 3D (rev 01)

Thanks again for the help

[devils casper]

Execute this

grep -i driver /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Post output here.

[Shugotenshi_X]

grep -i driver /etc/X11/xorg.conf shows nothing. But here's my xorg.conf file info

xorg.conf:

Section "Device"
	Identifier	"Configured Video Device"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
	Identifier	"Configured Monitor"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
	Identifier	"Default Screen"
	Monitor		"Configured Monitor"
	Device		"Configured Video Device"
EndSection

[devils casper]

Ubuntu is using default Video driver. Set driver value to "vesa" in xorg.conf and check if it works.

Section "Device"
	Identifier	"Configured Video Device"
        Driver       "vesa"
EndSection

[Shugotenshi_X]

Allow me to buy you a beer. That worked wonders. I have two of these little guys that had this problem. Thank you both so much for the help. Googling these things seems to raise more questions than answers sometimes.

A thousand thanks,

Shugo