10.04 issue with an old CRT monitor--not even a console login prompt...

[hosungs]

Greetings. Thanks for all your hard work on Ubuntu.

I tried installing 10.04 Desktop on my old desktop (with Soyo SY-RC350 motherboard) with an old Samsung CRT monitor (Samtron 76DF), and it kept showing "Sync. - out of range" monitor problem, so I tried 10.04 alternate CD, and it went fine on the text interface. I believe I chose the normal installation with the alternate CD. Now when I boot the machine, it shows the GRUB screen fine, but after I choose Ubuntu from the GRUB loader, it shows "Sync. - out of range" monitor message again, and I COULDN'T EVEN GET THE CONSOLE LOGIN PROMPT USING CTRL-ALT-F1!!! It's very weird, so I tried my LCD HDTV (with a VGA input) as the machine's monitor, and there I could see the GDM login screen (even though quite flickering), and could get the console login prompt using CTRL-ALT-F1. So, it definitely seems not a problem with the graphics card, but a problem with the monitor. But I think it's still very weird. How come even the console login is not possible??? Right now, I could log on to the machine through ssh (installed openssh-server while I tried with my LCD HDTV), so I'll try the various suggestions about X display issues (the machine's in my home and I'm at work right now), but I'm wondering if anyone has seen this kind of phenomenon? And any ideas?

Thanks.

[oldos2er]

What video card do you have? And other computer specs (RAM, CPU)?

[hosungs]

What video card do you have? And other computer specs (RAM, CPU)?

It's Soyo-SY-P4RS350 motherboard's on-board graphics controller and that's ATi Radeon 9000. Other specs are 1.6 GHz Pentium 4, 512 MB main memory (8MB assigned to the on-board graphics card), 200GB IDE hard drive. Again, when I tried my LCD HDTV as the monitor, it displayed both console login prompt screen as well as GDM and GNOME desktop. Thanks.

[oldos2er]

Just a thought, but if the CRT monitor is really old, it may not be able to handle resolution above 1024x768.

[hosungs]

Just a thought, but if the CRT monitor is really old, it may not be able to handle resolution above 1024x768.

Nope. It's been working at up to 1280x1024 on Windows XP. In fact, I had successfully installed and used an Ubuntu on this machine with that monitor about a year ago. I think it was 9.04 or 8.04, and didn't have any issue like this at all at that time.

[alephhat]

Did anything end up resolving this issue? I am having a similar problem where my CRT is having issues but a newer LCD works fine

[Mr_Speedy]

I had the same problem when installing. I think (I am not 100% sure) it is a video card driver problem. (I have a GeForce 9600GT and an Asus LCD monitor). When you manage to boot following these instructions, you should try to (re)install the video card drivers.
Try this:
When the grub appears, select Ubuntu but do not press enter. Press "e".
Navigate to and delete the words "quiet" and "splash" and in their place type "nomodeset".
Now press Ctrl and X to boot.

After installing my video card drivers everything worked fine for me, and I see the purple Ubuntu loading screen after the grub.

[doobydave]

I have the same problem. It's taken me a while to realise that the machine has booted, only failing to display anything useful.

I filed a bug on launchpad about this, was hoping for some sort of workaround.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/623880

[snowpine]

I have the same issue with my old Samtron monitor (sync out of range). It was not an issue with older Ubuntu releases. Subscribed.