display between boot and login is corrupted - HELP

Hi,

I've posted in a few threads about this already but I wanted to restart it bc there's been no resolution yet and I'm worried something may be corrupted. My original thread is here and a conversation with Sniper, who reported the same problem, is here .

I have Windows XP and FC5 on a dual boot. The grub screen is fine (now, it had some issues when first installed), and if I choose XP all proceeds as normal. If I choose FC5, the next screen (which should be telling me about the lvm's and uncompressing the kernel) doesn't display properly - the text shows up only as rows of dots (Sniper pointed out that it looks like braille). I know all is loading ok because the dots are green, not red. Once it gets to the login screen it is perfectly normal, and I have no further complications when using FC5. When it shuts down though instead of the screen where it says what's happening I get a multicoloured line display. One time the monitor shut off completely during this time. This only happens every 3 out of 4 boots which is why I know what the screen is supposed to say.

Grub works fine, so it isn't grub I am told. The video card hasn't kicked in yet so it's not the video card (once again I am told). Sniper had the same problem and tried it on several different screens so it isn't the monitor. FC5 has been on my computer for less than a week and has been doing this since install (I installed off ISO files from a hard drive). So is my kernel corrupted and needs drastic action or is this just a weird who-knows and nothing really to worry about?!

This is ONLY in between telling grub which OS to boot and logging into FC5.

My hardware:
two hard drives, one 60 GB (the dual boot), and one 20 GB (slave); both unmounted, both fat32
Pentium 3 at 866 MHz w. 384 MB SD RAM
nVidia GeForce FX 5500 AGP 2X w. 256 MB DDR RAM
Samsung SyncMaster 750s CRT

Really appreciate any thoughts!

[giulix]

Have you tried 'linux nofb' at the grub prompt, as the FAQ suggest ?

My bootup doesn't give me a grub prompt - I get a choice of two operating systems with options like 'enter * to edit boot command' and when I do I get a line of code, which I don't know how to interpret. I tried all of those options with the 'linux nofb' tagged after it, and either got Windows or....more rows of dots. So didn't work. I guess this is a Silly Newbie Question but I don't mind living with the dots as long as I know nothing in the computer is corrupted.

[giulix]

Yes, that's precisely what I meant: The command line you get when you press either 'e' or 'a' at the grub menu. That's where you can pass further options to the kernel. Sorrry to hear it didn't work. As Bob said, it has probably to do with the limited support the initial stage has for your hardware. If then all works fine, I think it's just a small nuisance. If you ever need to get a look at the log messages, you can use dmesg or have a look at the system logs...

Ok, I agree it's not earth-shattering (although it seems to be getting more colourful each time...). I don't quite understand how my hardware could have issues wi. Linux ONLY during boot. I actually put several weeks of research into determining which would be the best distro for my needs (both for what I wanted to do and my current hardware config) and I thought I had caught it all. I couldn't find any real resources (wiki's) on what hardware is compatible w. fedora so I used an interactive database from suse (and posted on this forum - the support you folks provide is amazing, a lifesaver to newbies!) The hardware that had issues I replaced. I'm really happy with fedora, if you could point me to where to look I'd appreciate it as I plan on getting a new computer in a year or two and would really hate to have this happen again or worse...

Does fedora have a centralized gui for accessing details of what hardware is installed on the system (like Ubuntu's device manager) that I could install?

That all said, if that's the worst I have to put up with it's still worth all the investment. I booted up windows only once since I installed fedora. Windows is so extremely slow - it took twice long as fedora does to boot, and then I had to spend most of my time there updating antivirus/firewalls and cleaning up junk files. I have yet to find anything I CAN'T do in Linux - even my iPod is managed better (by amarok). Totally converted!