HP DV7 - ATI HD 5650 startx issue (Black screen)

[mical]

i've also got the same problem, i have a ati 5650, HP Envy 14.
i cant get x to start off the live cd. i've tried both radeon.modeset=0 and i915.modset=1 but neither work
any ideas?

[Specter999]

I also have HD5650 on HP 3030TX laptop, and haven't seen this mentioned on the forums yet, so that's how it worked for me.
After (or before?) installing the latest driver, first, set "radeon.modeset=0" as per instructions above; once the driver is installed, set "aticonfig --initial", then BEFORE you reboot, look up the set of commands for aticonfig (aticonfig --help): one of the commands towards the end lets you set the card to run in discreet graphics mode (using one GPU instead of both), would be like "aticonfig -p" or something to that effect. Once I've done that it began to work perfectly. Now if I can just get the GPU to be recognized by pyrit, and stop desktop effects from being disabled on every startup, everything will be perfect.

[Specter999]

Ok, the correct sequence is:

aticonfig --initial
aticonfig --px-dgpu
reboot

Why I'm so hung up on desktop effects is because it's gotta be the greatest looking OS I've seen yet. And in regards to installation with the blank screen, try typing "startx" while the screen is blacked out, the input should still work even if the screen doesn't. When I was installing it I first went through the "rm /root/.kde/cache-root/..." etc. procedure blind, and it worked.

[futex]

Hello, i have install ati-driver-installer-11-5-x86.x86_64.run driver succesfully, and run aticonfig --initial after, and reboot, but Xorg at the start get some error:

(EE) No supported AMD display adapters were found
(EE) No devices detected.

Fatal server error:
no screens found

I have an HP DM1Z ATI radeon HD6310M.

Thanks you

[Specter999]

I want to emphasize that you set your card to run in discrete mode BEFORE you reboot if you have a dual mode gfx card, otherwise you'll keep getting "no screens found" error, in which case you just boot in recovery mode, reset graphics to failsafe and run the commands again.

[mbooma]

Hi, can't fix black screen

other information, there 2 graphics card on HP DV7 (hybrid switch between ATI & Intel HD)

on windiws 7, PC boot with ATI when i am with sector and Intel if I work with battery.

[fub1tch]

Here's another thing to try:

edit your grub boot parameters and add

radeon.modeset=0

to the end of your linux boot line. If this is the same issue that I'm seeing on Ubuntu's Natty (11.04), it's a race-condition in the driver for handling run-time switching of the graphics cards.

yay I get to the shell now with my MSI EX610 notebook with ATI HD2400 now

Edit:

but startx still fails back to shell -.-

Solution that works atleast for MSI notebook with ATI HD2400 on KDE x64:

edit grub parameters and add:
radeon.modeset=0

Remove .kcache files in:
/root/.kde/cache-bt (2 files)
/root/.kde/cache-root (2 files)
and startx again

I hope there will be another release of BT5 without these "hacks" needed to boot the LiveCD... the BT4 LiveCD works without any problems...

[Specter999]

Hi, can't fix black screen

other information, there 2 graphics card on HP DV7 (hybrid switch between ATI & Intel HD)

on windiws 7, PC boot with ATI when i am with sector and Intel if I work with battery.

Yea, same here, in terms of modes and GPU's. I don't mean by any means to sound like a know-it-all, a question: what have you done so far, and what have you tried?
I haven't gotten past the black screen problem on the GNOME version, so I overwritten that with the KDE version and ran it blind, with blank screen: (quote, look on the forums for correct reference):

fix-splash
rm /root/.kde/cache-root/icon-cache.kcache
rm /root/.kde/cache-root/plasma_theme_Volatile.kcache
rm /root/.kde/cache-bt/icon-cache.kcache
rm /root/.kde/cache-bt/plasma_theme_Volatile.kcache

After that I was able to boot into recovery mode ([blank screen], type your credentials and password, startx), install the driver (assuming you have it now); etc.

worked from then. Post your reply, I'm keen to see this OS in its full glory.

[taxyst]

Ok... the way I see it there are two distinct sets of problems here

1. When you boot the LiveCD to install Bactrack to hard drive and type in startx, the screen just hangs there black and there is no way to install it
2. When you manage to install Backtrack, the screen is black etc..

problem 2 seams to be solved with the ati drivers, but problem 1 is not
you can't install the ati driver when dual booting because after the reboot you loose all the new installed settings as it is just in memory

so.. how to install Backtrack on ati 5650 that is in Envy 14 when you can't get to X, the install script will not start in command line do you have to be able to get X

SOLUTION:

in boot menu pres tab and edit options as follows:

/casper/vmlinuz file=/cdrom/preseed/custom.seed boot=casper initrd=/casper/initrd.gz text xforcevesa nomodeset