Video problem [solved]

D

Donald W. Grimes

Guest
I have a video problem that has me very confused. It is not an x11 problem as far as I can tell, because booting into my Arch installation disk I get illegibly blurry text without x being in use. I used another, later installation disk from Arch, and still very blurred text. I booted an Ubuntu disk, and in X the the text was also blurred to the point of unreadable. I guess I should say that the screen itself is distorted in general but the text is more noticeable. Even more confusing to me is that the windows installation I have on a spare hard drive shows up without issue. I did notice that as soon as the installation disks boot up I get a message from the tv that the refresh rate has changed to 59hz, but do not the significance if any nor how to change it if it is.

To sum up, I have tried 3 linux distro installation disks, all of which I have successfully installed before on my current hardware setup with no issue. None will boot into a screen with legible text, either inside the x server or out. Running GTX 550 graphics card via HDMI into Denon 586 reciever, which goes via HDMI to Sony Bravia HD tv. Tried to connect PC directly to TV and get a no signal error. Help would be very welcome at this point.
 


I have a video problem that has me very confused. It is not an x11 problem as far as I can tell, because booting into my Arch installation disk I get illegibly blurry text without x being in use. I used another, later installation disk from Arch, and still very blurred text. I booted an Ubuntu disk, and in X the the text was also blurred to the point of unreadable. I guess I should say that the screen itself is distorted in general but the text is more noticeable. Even more confusing to me is that the windows installation I have on a spare hard drive shows up without issue. I did notice that as soon as the installation disks boot up I get a message from the tv that the refresh rate has changed to 59hz, but do not the significance if any nor how to change it if it is.

To sum up, I have tried 3 linux distro installation disks, all of which I have successfully installed before on my current hardware setup with no issue. None will boot into a screen with legible text, either inside the x server or out. Running GTX 550 graphics card via HDMI into Denon 586 reciever, which goes via HDMI to Sony Bravia HD tv. Tried to connect PC directly to TV and get a no signal error. Help would be very welcome at this point.

My first thoughts is that it is a driver issue. My next guess is that anti-aliasing is disabled in your Linux systems. Try going into the video settings and enabled anti-aliasing and full-hinting. Also, ensure you have the latest updates.
 
My first thoughts is that it is a driver issue. My next guess is that anti-aliasing is disabled in your Linux systems. Try going into the video settings and enabled anti-aliasing and full-hinting. Also, ensure you have the latest updates.

It is fixed now. I went through my entire system piece by piece and was about to disassemble my graphics card when I remembered the TV had not been turned off in a couple of days and was fairly hot. I unplugged it for five minutes, tried it again and no issues. I don't know why it was able to detect Windows correctly [if I had to guess it would be because the system was already set to the screens native resolution and refresh rate] but am glad to have my system up and running again. I appreciate you taking the time to try to help me though. I don't always find it easy to get help on technical forums.
 
Last edited:
It is fixed now. I went through my entire system piece by piece and was about to disassemble my graphics card when I remembered the TV had not been turned off in a couple of days and was fairly hot. I unplugged it for five minutes, tried it again and no issues. I don't know why it was able to detect Windows correctly [if I had to guess it would be because the system was already set to the screens native resolution and refresh rate] but am glad to have my system up and running again. I appreciate you taking the time to try to help me though. I don't always find it easy to get help on technical forums.

That is an interesting solution. Feel free to continue coming here for help. I hope we can be of better help in the future.:)
 

Members online


Latest posts

Top