Dell Inspiron 8600 installation issues with Fedora 15 & 16

[jebolton]

I currently have Fedora 14 running on my Dell Inspiron 8600. I have tried upgrading AND fresh install of Fedora 15 & 16 on this laptop and I get display issues. I am not able to use the laptop after the installation. I have to reinstall Fedora 14. I would love to get 16 installed on this laptop can someone help with this situation?

Thanks,
John

[nonamedotc]

What sort of display issues are you experiencing? Post more details - system configuration, error messages (if any) - basically, a more detailed description of the problem you are facing.

[jebolton]

System configuration: Pentium M 1.70, 2GBs RAM, NVIDIA GeForce FX5200 video with 32MBs VRAM.

Display issue:
Everything goes great through the installation. I get as far as logging into my UID and that is when I have the display problem. The display is distorted, black and white lines and boxes. The screen alternates designs; one column looks like an accordian the next column looks like a checkered board all the way down the column, then it repeats column after column for about 12 collumns. When I try to go to the logoff in the upper right corner, it is a solid color and the dropdown appears but it is also a solid color and the text is not visible. So I have to guess where the logoff text is on the dropdown. I end up having to power off the laptop. It seems to me to be a video driver issue, but I don't know how to get it to a place where I can update the driver to fix the problem.

Thanks for any insights.

[BBQdave]

Originally Posted by jebolton

System configuration: Pentium M 1.70, 2GBs RAM, NVIDIA GeForce FX5200 video with 32MBs VRAM.

Thanks for any insights.

Not sure if this is helpful:

I am running F16 (32-bit) Xfce on a dell inspiron 1100 with 2.0 GHz celeron and 1 gig of ram.

I booted up the live cd to test out the system, then installed. I also tested F16 Gnome 3, off of live cd it would run in fallback mode. I went ahead and did an install of F16 Gnome 3, to test. It functioned in fallback mode. I went with F16 Xfce, both installs worked well, with no video issue.

If I understood correctly, you were able to test using F16 (32-bit) cd OK. But the install had video issues after install-reboot?

[jebolton]

I did try the Live DVD with the same results. Thanks for the suggestion. What I would like to do is see if there is a way to update the video driver but the only way I know how to do this is through a command line since I can't see anything once I get logged in. Does anyone know how to either boot up in command line mode or log in to a profile in command line mode instead of the GUI so I can try and update the video driver to see if it fixes my problem.

Thanks,
John

[george_toolan]

Press Ctrl+Alt+F2 and login on the text console.

[jebolton]

I have tried several times to update the driver but unfortunately it seems that I do not have an internet connection when logged in via command line. I have tried ping and traceroute and keep getting unknow host to URLs that I know exist. Since I don't have an Internet connection I can not follow the instructions from here:
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=204752
OR
http://www.if-not-true-then-false.co...ouveau-driver/

If anyone has any suggestions I'm listening.

Who knows, maybe in 12 days Fedora 17 will be my solution ... one can only hope.

Thanks,
John

[jebolton]

When in command mode, instead of GUI, is there a way to enable / disable the Internet connection or network adapter. I have tried ping and traceroute and it is not connected to the Internet. I'm not up to speed on command mode. If I can get online in command mode I think I can install the correct drivers to get Fedora 16 working on my Inspiron 8600.

Thanks!

[tashirosgt]

If you have configured your network connection then, as root, do

service network start

If you haven't configured the connection this can be done from the command line, but I'd need a review before I could tell you how!

[abdujaparov]

Hi,
I installed Fedora 16 on my inspiron 8600 but how can I active the 3d acceleration of the ati mobility radeon 9600 (rv350)?
Thanks,
bye bye