ZorinOS help -- black screen(s) with mouse cursor.

M

Murp

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Howdy! I'm trying to covert to Linux from Windows XP, and after looking through some distros, decided to go with Zorin OS. That Look Changer with it's XP theme is just too awesome.

Unfortunately, the people who run the official Zorin OS site's forum are...kind of...(how do I put this?) ...Nutter butter. I posted a topic asking some questions, noting that I already searched the forum thoroughly for the answers and couldn't find them, and a staff member responded with a half-reply to one of my questions, and a suggestion to browse more thoroughly. When I reiterated that I had attempted to find the info on my own and failed, they permanently banned my IP from accessing their site whatsoever @_@

So apologies for coming here for support.

Anyway, I tried live-booting the latest Zorin OS (9.whatever) and after the blue logo screen, it goes to a totally black screen with the mouse cursor on it. No keyboard keys or mouse presses do anything whatsoever.

Also - and this is really weird - I'm running a netbook here, and the monitor is broke (well, the left half of the screen is "cracked"), so I have it hooked up via VGA to a CRT monitor. Well, apparently, while I was running Zorin OS, it treated the netbook's screen as the upper-left quarter of the desktop, and the CRT monitor as the upper-right. If I moved my cursor around on the CRT monitor, it didn't show up on the netbook screen, I couldn't go off the top or right side of the screen, but I could go way off the bottom, and if I went off the left, the cursor would appear on the netbook screen.

Obviously, since the netbook screen is broken, I can't rightly disconnect the CRT and try again. I found this (thank you, internet proxies)...
http://www.zoringroup.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=5984
...which is pretty much my problem, except I really don't understand the solution at all. Wolfman (who's the guy who gave me a crap answer then banned me :/) says...

start your PC in recovery mode and select "Network" and then activate it then drop to "root" and type the following
sudo apt-get install nvidia-current

Restart your PC with Ctrl + Alt + Del and see how it runs.

A NETWORK CABLE IS REQUIRED FOR THE ABOVE TO WORK!.

YOU MIGHT ALSO WANT TO CHECK FOR UPDATES AND SEE IF EVERYTHING IS INSTALLED CORRECTLY:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade -f

Starting my PC in recovery mode will boot into safe Windows XP -- the Zorin OS is only a live test, I didn't install it, so there's nowhere for me to type in those commands! Also, I don't have an NVIDIA card anyway. According to my Device Manager, I have two "Intel(R) Graphics Media Accelerator 3150"

And the more-complex thingy about it is...
PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_A011&SUBSYS_03491025&REV_00\3&B1BFB68&0&10

Any help? I love the look of Zorin OS based on what I've seen, but the official staff are unhelpful and belligerent (I don't even think English is their first language, they often seem to have trouble understanding things, and their responses are certainly stilted and difficult-to-read).
 


hmm. Before the blue splash screen during startup is there a menu that appears? If so when at that screen make sure to press 'e' and from their navigate with the arrow keys to the line that says 'quite splash'. erase the quite splash and replace it with 'nomodeset' then ctrl+x and hopefully that gets you to the install screen.
 
What you can try is turning off the netbook display with xrandr.

xrandr -q

Will show the display names, e.g. LVDS1 might be the name of the netbook display and VGA-0 the name of the connected monitor.

Use the proper names and try

xrandr --output LVDS1 --off --output VGA-0 --auto

Good luck ;)
 
UPDATE: I tried live booting Zorin OS on a different computer and it worked just fine, so I know the USB drive and the distro are in working order. It must be my graphics card.

hmm. Before the blue splash screen during startup is there a menu that appears? If so when at that screen make sure to press 'e' and from their navigate with the arrow keys to the line that says 'quite splash'. erase the quite splash and replace it with 'nomodeset' then ctrl+x and hopefully that gets you to the install screen.

Oh, I get past the install screen. There's a DOS-like boot menu with options like Install, Try Zorin OS without Installing, etc. It's technically what should be the desktop that's all-black with the mouse cursor. I'll see if I can try your suggestion anyway, though.

What you can try is turning off the netbook display with xrandr.

xrandr -q

Will show the display names, e.g. LVDS1 might be the name of the netbook display and VGA-0 the name of the connected monitor.

Use the proper names and try

xrandr --output LVDS1 --off --output VGA-0 --auto

Good luck ;)

Thanks, but unfortunately, I don't have access to a terminal, so there's nowhere for me to type any of that in.
 

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