Help screen blank

[IbChristian]

Hi.

I loaded Linux Mint Mate (Mayt-ee? Maht-ay? Whatever...), and everything seems to be working OK, except for the help screen. (F1) Whenever I activate it I get the help window, but the window's screen is blank and nothing I hav tried has fixed this...

Anybody know what's causing this and how I can fix it? I really don't want to have to bother y'all every time I have a simple question that the Distro itself could easily answer.

Thanks in advance

 

[Condobloke]

Does it open correctly if you click on the Help option in the menu ?

 

[Alexzee]

Did you verify the integrity of the .iso?
And update the system lately?

 

[KGIII]

I believe we've seen this in the very recent past.

 

[IbChristian]

Does it open correctly if you click on the Help option in the menu ?

Did you verify the integrity of the .iso?
And update the system lately?

The help from the main menu does work, I have to type in "help" for it to show though, as there is no displayed icon. It will also work with any program/app I have loaded separately (Libre Office, PhotoFlare, Brave, etc.) However, anytime I click help in any of the basic applications that came with the Distro (like the Terminal, Home Folder, even the desktop), I get the blank screened window shown.

The .iso was downloaded direct from the Mint website: linuxmint.com I used Balena Etcher to create a boot on a flash drive. The Etcher program verifies(?) it after creating the boot drive. Is that what you mean?

EDIT: I just downloaded the latest update package and once it had finished installing I rebooted my computer and tried to access the help menu for one of the Distro functions (I chose the Terminal, if that matters) Still, no change, the F1/help menu looks no different than above.

 

[Alexzee]

The help from the main menu does work, I have to type in "help" for it to show though, as there is no displayed icon. It will also work with any program/app I have loaded separately (Libre Office, PhotoFlare, Brave, etc.) However, anytime I click help in any of the basic applications that came with the Distro (like the Terminal, Home Folder, even the desktop), I get the blank screened window shown.

The .iso was downloaded direct from the Mint website: linuxmint.com I used Balena Etcher to create a boot on a flash drive. The Etcher program verifies(?) it after creating the boot drive. Is that what you mean?

EDIT: I just downloaded the latest update package and once it had finished installing I rebooted my computer and tried to access the help menu for one of the Distro functions (I chose the Terminal, if that matters) Still, no change, the F1/help menu looks no different than above.

You said in post #1 you loaded LM Mate.
Is Mint actually installed to the hard disk or are you running this Live via a usb?

I don't know if Etcher verifies or not however, what I do know is that Balena Etcher has been problematic for a while.
Verifying the integrity of the .iso before you use a program (I recommend Ventoy) and before you install it to a hard disk is essential.

The article I wrote yesterday will help you understand the integrity and authentication standard.

Thread 'Linux Mint Before And After Installation'

Mar 18, 2026

If your new to Linux and you'd like to install Linux Mint I believe this is what you'll need.

Linux Mint Before And After Installation

In today’s article I’ll be going over some tasks that you’ll want to perform before you install Linux Mint and after your fresh installation is complete. The current version of Li…

linuxfixes55.wordpress.com

Kudos to my Linux brothers @Condobloke and our Administrator @wizardfromoz.

Alex

• Alexzee
• Replies: 0
• Forum: Getting Started

• 
• 

The more I think about this type of performance issue the more I'm leaning towards perhaps video driver conflicts and maybe firmware issues.
What graphics card do you have?

lsmod | grep -E "nvidia|amdgpu|radeon|i915"

 

[GatorsFan]

Open you Synaptic Package Manager and search for mate-user-guide and install it or reinstall it - does it work now?

 

[garyn]

Whenever I "discover" a glitch I'm more often than not a bit behind in my updates and performing them invariably clears the glitch.

 

[IbChristian]

Mint is installed on the laptop's actual hard drive; and it's the only OS on it. I used to have Windows 7, but it finally crashed and I couldn't repair it. So I used the opportunity to try out Linux and loaded Mint instead of re-installing Win7.

I don't seem to have a "Synaptic Package Manager". Also, I seem to be having a problem updating, I keep getting an error message. So I'm thinking that maybe the initial install was flawed; Alexzee did say that Etcher has been somewhat sketchy lately. So I think I'm going to try making a new boot drive, this time using Rufus. From what I've seen, Ventoy looks to be a bit too complex, but I will keep it in mind. BTW: Is there a way to double check the integrity of the .iso besides using the the program itself? Etcher also "verified" the .iso and said it was fine, but it seems too have missed something.

I'm not sure what my video card is, Nvidia, I think. How do you find out? Everything else involving images and videos works fine.

EDIT: I tried Rufus, but it didn't work, perhaps because I had to use an older version? Who knows. I managed to get Mint reinstalled using the Etcher USB. However, Ventoy seems to be for creating A USB drive you can boot from. I want to install Linux on the computer.

 

[bob466]

Before we all have a panic attack...the same things appears in Mint Cinnamon 22.1..

and Mint mate 22.3...

I've never used it...I wouldn't worry if I were you as your system is just fine.

 

[Alexzee]

Mint is installed on the laptop's actual hard drive; and it's the only OS on it. I used to have Windows 7, but it finally crashed and I couldn't repair it. So I used the opportunity to try out Linux and loaded Mint instead of re-installing Win7.

I don't seem to have a "Synaptic Package Manager". Also, I seem to be having a problem updating, I keep getting an error message. So I'm thinking that maybe the initial install was flawed; Alexzee did say that Etcher has been somewhat sketchy lately. So I think I'm going to try making a new boot drive, this time using Rufus. From what I've seen, Ventoy looks to be a bit too complex, but I will keep it in mind. BTW: Is there a way to double check the integrity of the .iso besides using the the program itself? Etcher also "verified" the .iso and said it was fine, but it seems too have missed something.

I'm not sure what my video card is, Nvidia, I think. How do you find out? Everything else involving images and videos works fine.

EDIT: I tried Rufus, but it didn't work, perhaps because I had to use an older version? Who knows. I managed to get Mint reinstalled using the Etcher USB. However, Ventoy seems to be for creating A USB drive you can boot from. I want to install Linux on the computer.

With Rufus not working for you and Etcher being problematic looks like your left with using Ventoy.

Yes you can verify the .iso's integrity....see the link below to the article I wrote to help you.

Linux Mint Before And After Installation

In today’s article I’ll be going over some tasks that you’ll want to perform before you install Linux Mint and after your fresh installation is complete. The current version of Li…

linuxfixes55.wordpress.com

Boot with the Live Linux Mint usb thumb drive that you used to install Mint.
Once it boot's to the desktop launch Firefox and go to Mints website.
Then download a fresh .iso of Linux Mint that you want.

Download Linux Mint 22.3 - Linux Mint

Linux Mint is an elegant, easy to use, up to date and comfortable desktop operating system.

linuxmint.com

To find out what GPU (graphics card) you have run this command in the terminal and press enter.

lspci | grep -i vga

If you have trouble with Ventoy let us know.
There's another way, a little more complex ( the dd command) but I can walk you through it if need be.

 

[IbChristian]

Got it to work! I had to go through a few different create UBS/install methods, but I finally succeeded in loading Cinnamon (ironically, using a USB stick created on my Win7 desktop with Etcher). This installation did successfully install the latest updates, and these seem to have corrected the "help" function problem. Cinnamon is not the version I wanted for the laptop, but I can deal with it, I guess.

 

[Alexzee]

Got it to work! I had to go through a few different create UBS/install methods, but I finally succeeded in loading Cinnamon (ironically, using a USB stick created on my Win7 desktop with Etcher). This installation did successfully install the latest updates, and these seem to have corrected the "help" function problem. Cinnamon is not the version I wanted for the laptop, but I can deal with it, I guess.

Thanks for the update.
Glad to hear that your fresh installation went well.

You can add another desktop environment but you should start another thread for that.

 

[bob466]

Let's see a screenshot of it working.

 

[IbChristian]

Shazbot! It stopped working again! Instead of the browser opening as it did last time when I clicked "help"/F1, I got the blank screen again. What's worse is this time the computer completely locked up. Nothing worked and I had to do hard shutdown and restart.

EDIT: I ran TimeShift to see if that would bring it back, no luck. At least everything else seems to be working, I'll just have to rely on the forums for help.

 

[IbChristian]

Alexzee: I ran your command; [ lspci | grep -i vga ] in the terminal and got:
[ VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GT218M [NVS 3100M] (rev a2) ]

Also, do you have a more printer friendly version of that tutorial? The images come out too heavy to read.

As for Ventoy, everything I've seen on it points to using it for booting from the thumb drive (usually so you can boot using different operating systems, like windows OR Linux OR Mac, etc.), I have seen nothing about using it to install the OS onto the computer. Am I missing something?

 

[CaffeineAddict]

Anybody know what's causing this and how I can fix it?

It's probably wayland or no help files installed.

 

[IbChristian]

Probably. If no other serious problems arise, I'll just live with it. I would have liked to have Mate though.

 

[KGIII]

Shazbot

Wait... A Mork and Mindy reference? LOL You've got to really be pretty old. (Some people give a fake age, which is fine.)

Robin Williams made some great stuff. Ah, well...

 

[Alexzee]

Alexzee: I ran your command; [ lspci | grep -i vga ] in the terminal and got:
[ VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GT218M [NVS 3100M] (rev a2) ]

Also, do you have a more printer friendly version of that tutorial? The images come out too heavy to read.

As for Ventoy, everything I've seen on it points to using it for booting from the thumb drive (usually so you can boot using different operating systems, like windows OR Linux OR Mac, etc.), I have seen nothing about using it to install the OS onto the computer. Am I missing something?

Thanks.
Yeah you have a Nvidia GPU. Here's the specs on it.

NVIDIA GT218 GPU Specs

16 Cores, 8 TMUs, 4 ROPs

www.techpowerup.com

No, I don't have any lighter versions of those images for a printer, sorry.
I could make them lighter and send them to you via a pm.
Would that help?


Ventoy is a program to make the .iso image of a operating system bootable on a thumb drive.
That way, you can install what ever os you like. Once the program finishes making the thumb drive bootable (Live image) with a Linux os you can then enter into the Boot section of your BIOS. Then make the thumb drive first in the boot order list, save the changes and reboot.
Upon rebooting you can proceed with the installation of the os of your choice.