Member Avatar for J_A

hi guys

I did try to run a search of the forum but it spat out nothing useful. forgive me if this has already been addressed. but I do need some help here.

I'm a total newbie to linux and was trying to install ubuntu 6.1. I burned an ISO disc and it seemed to start booting and installing but then hung itself up only showing the brown ubuntu screen (no progress). after retrying a couple of times, I tried to run ubuntu 5.1 from a live CD. it seemed to be mounting things but in the end it gave me a "fatal server error: No screen found". also, the file /dev/apm_bios was missing. and in the end it said it couldn't enable the X server, that it was now disabled until the scree n is configured correctly. only i don't really know what it wants me to do?... :rolleyes:

it did ask once during the installation what kind of resolution it should use and i didn't change anything there, but I don't really know what else I could do?...

help?

thanks :)

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Member Avatar for John A

What graphics card do you have?

Member Avatar for J_A

I suppose that would be the ATI Mobility Radeon X1400.

someone I know said it's about reconfiguring the screen to the correct Hz or something...

and I also forgot to mention, I'm on a Dell Inspiron 6400 laptop.

Member Avatar for TheNNS

the x server isn't starting probably because it can't find the drivers for it.

Member Avatar for alienlinux

you need to try the safe video option in the boot screen, also try adding nofb to the kernel options also on the boot screen. Nvidia and ATI's drivers are proprietary so the distributions can't distribute their drivers, but this will get you going in 2D mode at least just to get it installed :)

Member Avatar for J_A

problem's all sorted out. it was a simple matter of using an original ubuntu disc instead of a burned iso one. now it's up and running, even got kubuntu up as well. thanks for all your suggestions tho, much appreciated! :-)

Member Avatar for alienlinux

problem's all sorted out. it was a simple matter of using an original ubuntu disc instead of a burned iso one. now it's up and running, even got kubuntu up as well. thanks for all your suggestions tho, much appreciated! :-)

you wanna maybe mark th thread solved then? :)
thanks

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