Video Scrambled in all Red Hat Based Distros

[Starmage187]

Hello. I'm posting this message in the hopes that some one will be able to help me. My desktop computer refuses to use any distro that is based on Red Hat. Both Fedora 6 and the latest release of 7 come up with scrambled video, as do most Red Hat based distros (PCLinuxOS, Mandriva, OpenSuse). The machine tries to load a graphical window, but instead of picture all I get is a variety of colored lines and the outline of a picture.

The problem occurs in both the installer and the livecd environment. I'm pretty sure that the problem is the graphics card, which is a Nvidia 6800 GS. Not only because it is a video issue, but also because I'm able to use Debian based distros, and Gentoo works if the vesa driver is used. Fedora probing, however, correctly identifies the card. Reconfiguring X didn't help in FC6, however, and neither did the steps for completely removing any propriatary drivers.

If some could just tell me how to get the livecd of Fedora 7 to load so that I could get an installed system to work from, that'd be great. If some one could tell me how to fix the problem all together, that would be utterly fantastic.

My system specs are as follows:

Gigabyte GI8 series mainboard (exact number eludes me at present)
Pentium D 940 Socket T processor
2 Gigabytes of RAM
One 320 Gigabyte SATA HD
Two 80 Gigabyte IDE HDs
Two 18x DVD Burners
Nvidia 6800 GS 256MB-PCI Express 16x

Please, if I've left anything out let me know. Thanks in advance.

[paul matthijsse]

Hello, try to boot from the dvd with the following arguments:
linux irqpoll noapic acpi=off

this might help -- or not :-)

Paul.

[Starmage187]

It didn't help any. The video still came up scrambled. Any other ideas.

Thanks.

[A.Serbinski]

Do a text mode installation and then try installing the real NVidia driver from their website. The open source drivers sometimes cause those kinds of problems with some hardware. As you've already mentioned, other distributions work with the vesa driver (which, BTW, you can use in Fedora if you like, but the performance really sucks).

[Starmage187]

Two questions which are going to sound really, really stupid:

how do you do a text install from the livecd?

How do you get the livecd to use vesa?

[A.Serbinski]

Download the install CDs or DVDs.

[JN4OldSchool]

just type "linux vesa" at the boot prompt. This is your problem. Fedora based will use your nVidia card just fine but the nv driver that is installed by default is trash. Just i9nstall under vesa then install the livna driver.

[Starmage187]

Yeah, I figured that Serbinski. I was just hoping to be able to take stock of everything before the install.

I'll try that, JN4OldSchool, as soon as I get back to that machine. I tried something like that last night, but there is every possibility I made a mistake some where. I'll let you know how it goes.