Linux Mint 15 KDE and XFCE on Dell Inspiron 1100 problems

[DaveLembke]

Trying to get Linux Mint 15 on a Dell Inspiron 1100 laptop.

Specs are:

Intel Celeron 2.4 Ghz
Intel 845 Integrated Graphics
640MB RAM
20GB IDE HDD

Laptop linked below for more spec info. It can also max out at 1GB RAM even though other stats on google claim 512MB Max memory. It has 640MB of DDR 266Mhz RAM sticks installed a 512MB + 128MB stick ( It came originally with 2 x 128MB sticks and the owner before me added a 512MB stick in place of one of the 128MB sticks bringing it to 640MB. It supports 2 x 512MB sticks for a max of 1GB with BIOS A32):

http://www.rakuten.com/prod/dell-inspiron-1100-inspiron-11002gcel256-20dvd14-1nic/209382848.html?listingId=270590745

First attempted Linux Mint 15 KDE and it installed, but after reboot the screen was black. So I thought that maybe Linux Mint 15 KDE requires more than 640MB RAM, so lets try XFCE instead. XFCE can run on as little as 384MB RAM.

Performed clean install of Linux Mint 15 XFCE and got to the reboot and the screen was black again after the post screen displayed no Linux boot display. If you hit CTRL + ALT + Delete and press the right arrow 2x and hit enter you can get it to shutdown, but no display, so the OS is running, but no display is shown.

Did google search and found some people with similar issues with Linux and this laptop model and someone said try flashing the BIOS to A32. My BIOS was A25, so ok... dig out my USB floppy drive and a 1.44MB disk and format it as a bootable floppy with windows 7 and add the BIOS flash EXE to the floppy, boot off of that and then execute the EXE and flash it forward to A32. Performed the flash and problem still remained.

Trying to figure out why the display driver is having issues between the Live Boot off the DVD which works fine and why after its installed to the local hard drive the display driver doesnt work properly. It should be using the same driver it used for the install process to apply to the build to the hard drive, but it appears to be using an alternate driver.

Is there a way to specifiy it to use a specific driver through the build process? Only options I see during installation are Region Settings, Keyboard Setting - English etc, options for installation type ( in which I chose to format and use the entire HDD for the install ), and then create user name and password and select auto logon or require password etc, and then it just chugs away at the install and then when its done you perform the reboot and remove the DVD, and it is then at this point that it has issues.

One last attempt at trying to figure this out is that maybe the data being written to the HDD was getting corrupt, so I swapped out the 20GB HDD with a 12GB HDD that I had and after the install and config, still the same results, you get the post screen of the Dell Laptop, and then the screen goes black and nothing displayed, but Linux is booting correctly although without a display.

* Also FYI, this laptop ran perfectly fine on Windows XP Home that was on it prior to this attemped Linux install.

[camerongray]

Something like KDE is probably too heavy for that laptop (Not saying that that is the problem but XFCE would be a better choice anyway).

That said, it would help if you could share the X11 log file - This is located at /var/log/ (Probably called Xorg.0.log).  You'll need to get into a command line to do this so to do that press Ctrl+Alt+F* when you are on the black screen (Where F* is one of the function keys, you may need to try a few).  This will bring up a login prompt which should allow you to access the system via the terminal in order to view the log file.

[DaveLembke]

Thanks for response to this issue... I will try it out when I get home from work tonight. I may have to boot off knoppix or the live version of the install DVD and then go to term from there to navigate to the log file on the HDD, since I doubt I will be able to get to command prompt in its existing state where nothing is displayed except for black screen.

[camerongray]

You should be able to get to the terminal directly as the issue most likely lies with X11, the alternative text terminals (Ctrl+Alt+F*) do not use X11 so should work.  Of course if this doesn't work you can always boot off of the Knoppix CD as you said.

[Cityscape]

Trying to figure out why the display driver is having issues between the Live Boot off the DVD which works fine and why after its installed to the local hard drive the display driver doesnt work properly.

Ahhh yes, this issue. I've had it before. Unfortunately I can't remember if I solved it or how I did.

Is there a way to specifiy it to use a specific driver through the build process?

Not to my knowledge. I think you could with Debian but not Ubuntu or Mint.