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View Full Version : [SOLVED] 10.04 on Dell Inspiron 8500 laptop



linfidel
May 3rd, 2010, 05:33 PM
My old Inspiron laptop has been running Ubuntu Karmic for a while now with no problems - saved me from the XP that was installed when it was given to me.

I upgraded to Lucid on my desktop, and liked it a lot, so I want to upgrade my laptop, but it's not working well at all, even from the live CD (even from the initial startup screen, where the graphics are all very "noisy"). I went ahead and tried upgrading Karmic, since it's easy enough to reinstall, but it is unusable.

The text in the menus, editors, desktop, etc, is totally clear, but the cursor, menu highlights, and other graphical stuff is very bad, and some text is unreadable (like running programs on the taskbar, some dialogs)

I booted to the previous kernel, which ran at a lower resolution (1280x1024 instead of 1920x1200), and it looked better, but the aspect ratio was wrong. But decreasing resolution for normal boot did not help.

Also, it seems that the desktop stops responding for no apparent reason.

It did seem to detect my video card correctly (Nvidia), according to dmidecode. Everything there looked OK to me.

I'd really like to get this working; I suppose I can reinstall Karmic, but I'm not looking forward to that.

dino99
May 3rd, 2010, 05:37 PM
check your driver: system admin hardware driver

into console:

metacity --replace
sudo dpkg --configure -a

linfidel
May 3rd, 2010, 06:04 PM
check your driver: system admin hardware driverThanks a lot for the reply.

First time I tried that, the system hung. I ran it from a terminal ("sudo /usr/bin/jockey-gtk") and got a stacktrace. I tried with a "-c" switch and got an error "cannot connect to backend, is it busy?".



into console:

metacity --replace
sudo dpkg --configure -a
Neither of those had any effect, or output at all. I was not running any proprietary drivers prior to the upgrade, and I'm pretty sure I'm not now, either. Trying to enable desktop effects fails normally.

I'll wait to see if there is a solution before going back to Karmic, but maybe I'm just SOL. Wish I could afford a new laptop, but the only reason I was able to get this is my sister got a new one and I got the hand-me-down.

Stoker580
May 12th, 2010, 10:08 AM
I'm a complete newcomer to Ubuntu. I have just installed version 10.4 as a dual boot with Windows XP on an old Dell Inspiron 8500 and have experienced the exact same problems as Infidel as regards the screen display. The cursor appears to have a ghost or shadow and many of the graphics are unclear although normal text is perfectly clear. Not sure what to do now and so came to this forum. I would really like to get away from Windows XP completely and would be keen to pursue a solution to this problem. Any advice would be appreciated but would need to take account of the fact that I have no previous experience with Ubuntu.

linfidel
May 12th, 2010, 05:27 PM
I'm a complete newcomer to Ubuntu. I have just installed version 10.4 as a dual boot with Windows XP on an old Dell Inspiron 8500 and have experienced the exact same problems as Infidel as regards the screen display. The cursor appears to have a ghost or shadow and many of the graphics are unclear although normal text is perfectly clear. Not sure what to do now and so came to this forum. I would really like to get away from Windows XP completely and would be keen to pursue a solution to this problem. Any advice would be appreciated but would need to take account of the fact that I have no previous experience with Ubuntu.I'm just getting back to trying to fix this. Every version prior to this worked great, and I liked it better than Windows. I'll let you know if I find out anything.

Does your system crash after using it a little? Mine seems to be, mostly when using the terminal, it seems.

linfidel
May 12th, 2010, 05:44 PM
BTW, do you have the Nvidia card in your system?

I just booted mine up, ran a terminal, and it crashed the system before I ever ran a single command. The mouse worked, but no other keys worked, including ctrl-alt-delete, trying to run VTs, or even the power switch shutdown. I had to hold the power switch down to force shutdown.

Right now I'm trying the live CD with various options (using F6 at the first screen). I'll see if any help.

Stoker580
May 12th, 2010, 07:29 PM
I saw in another post that someone had successfully installed version 8.10 so I downloaded it and tried it from the cd. It seemed to work fine. However when I went to install it tried to create yet another partition which I wasn't keen on. With one thing and another my laptop is unusable at the moment and of course I can't find my original XP cd so that I can repair the system before proceeding. I'm trying to get my hands on an XP CD so that I can sort the problem out but as far as I remember it does have an Nvidia card.

As regards your previous question I didn't use it long enough for it to crash.

I am trying to end up with a dual boot in the first instance but if I can't repair the windows system I will just go ahead with a single boot Ubuntu system. I'm really fed up with Windows

linfidel
May 12th, 2010, 09:11 PM
Every version worked fine before this one. I had 9.1 (Karmic) running on it with no problems.

The partitioner in the installer is pretty dumb, I think. I always did manual partitioning, but my notebook has an XP partition (mainly for watching streaming Netflix), and it's not easy to get the installer to do the right thing. If I try to do it manually, it will omit the XP option. But, it's pretty easy to add it back, although not as easy as it used to be with the old GRUB version.

The installer won't wipe out the original XP, it justs changes the boot loader, and needs to add a simple command for chainloading XP off the 1st partition. Also, you don't really need the original XP disc if you just wanted to start over. It's easiest with something like an old Win95/98 disk, or even DOS. You just need fdisk, and you run "fdisk /mbr", which rewrites the correct boot loader for Windows. You can also download tools to fix it - you just need something that will boot and run fdisk, or another tool.

I'd recommend giving Karmic Koala a try - it boots faster than the older versions, and for me, worked well. After I put in an Intel wireless card that I got for about $15, it even runs wireless off the live CD!

Stoker580
May 12th, 2010, 11:06 PM
Many thanks you're a genius!

I just tried what you suggested using a Windows 98 CD that I have and it is now working again albeit with Windows.

In the first instance I will go ahead with a dual install of Ubuntu 8.10 and use it to get some familiarity with Ubuntu and then move on from there.

zoftware
May 13th, 2010, 06:09 AM
I am trying to help a friend dump Windows.

We are trying to install Ubuntu 10.04 on a Dell Inspiron.

We downloaded: ubuntu-10.04-desktop-i386.iso

When we attempted to install:

"I/O error"

"Error reading boot CD."

"Reboot"

We have completed this loop several times.

We have searched ubuntuforums.org, en.community.dell.com/support-forums, and google.com.

All suggestions welcome...

linfidel
May 14th, 2010, 12:08 AM
I am trying to help a friend dump Windows.

We are trying to install Ubuntu 10.04 on a Dell Inspiron.

We downloaded: ubuntu-10.04-desktop-i386.iso

When we attempted to install:

"I/O error"

"Error reading boot CD."

"Reboot"

We have completed this loop several times.

We have searched ubuntuforums.org, en.community.dell.com/support-forums, and google.com.

All suggestions welcome...Is this always with the same CD? The first obvious question is, did you check the CD (on the system trying to use it)? That should be one of the options.

If you don't even get that far, so you never see the opening menu, then did you try reburning the CD? Perhaps at a slower speed.

Are you booting from the CD, or installing it from Windows? And, just in case, I should ask... you do know how to burn an iso, right? (sorry, but you never know).

linfidel
May 14th, 2010, 02:30 AM
Well, as an update to the thread, I tried reinstalling fresh from a different CD (live CD), and it still didn't work. Tried the various tips from the Ubuntu release notes like disabling Nouveau, disabling acceleration, using the old nv driver; tried installing the proprietary driver; everything made it worse, nothing helped.

So, I've decided 10.04 does not run on the Dell Inspiron 8500 with an nVidia NV28 (GeForce4), and I've reinstalled 9.10, which runs fine, but isn't LTS, of course. I'm assuming my laptop won't last long enough to outlive this version anyway.

By the way, it took many hours to install on this beast. I thought it had crashed at one point. 9.10 is much faster to install. There must be some low-level problem.

Stoker580
May 14th, 2010, 08:39 AM
How did the subject line change from 8500 to 9300? Anyway, I've been trying 9.1 from the LiveCD on my Dell Inspiron 8500 and it seems to work fine for my purposes anyway although I've still to try out printing and connecting to the internet via a mobile dongle. Before doing an install on my hard drive I'm waiting to see if I can get a solution to a problem with partitioning - at the moment the Ubuntu partitioner isn't recognising that Windows exists and just sees the 60Gb drive as a single free partition - which I have raised in another thread on the Dell Support section. One way or another I'll probably go with 9.10 until I hear that these problems with 10.04 have been resolved. Many thanks for your help.

linfidel
May 15th, 2010, 06:50 AM
How did the subject line change from 8500 to 9300? Anyway, I've been trying 9.1 from the LiveCD on my Dell Inspiron 8500 and it seems to work fine for my purposes anyway although I've still to try out printing and connecting to the internet via a mobile dongle. Before doing an install on my hard drive I'm waiting to see if I can get a solution to a problem with partitioning - at the moment the Ubuntu partitioner isn't recognising that Windows exists and just sees the 60Gb drive as a single free partition - which I have raised in another thread on the Dell Support section. One way or another I'll probably go with 9.10 until I hear that these problems with 10.04 have been resolved. Many thanks for your help.
I didn't notice the model number change - our thread got hijacked! I changed it back. :)

I really don't like the install partitioner. I usually just do it manually, but if I have Windows and want it to set it up, I usually still partition using gParted first, then use the next to last option, and double-check it first.

jdoug
May 23rd, 2010, 11:17 PM
Hey guys, first timer here. I never could get the 10.04 desktop to install on my 8500. Went to the Netbook 10.04 and got most way thru, but, errors set in. Reburned new cd same thing. Loaded a USB then install proceeded without a hitch from the USB flash. Had units ethernet on router at time and upgrade did great. Now have linksys wireless card installed, also good.

linfidel
May 24th, 2010, 12:36 AM
So, is this the UNE remix you're using (UNR was 9.1 nomenclature)?

Personally, I'd prefer to stick with the mainstream version for my laptop, as it's more a portable version of my desktop, and runs a LAMP environment for web programming.

Karmic Koala runs fine on this system, although not Compiz. I was able to get desktop effects to work, except the window manager didn't work correctly. I had no titlebars, and the terminal window had no visible text. But certain effects seemed to work fine, such as zoom, which is the main thing I wanted, and Expo. I think there must be a way to get it to work, but I just don't have time to keep screwing with it.

jdoug
May 26th, 2010, 01:07 PM
Yes it is the remix. Looks different than the desktop version. I put the desktop on an old desktop via the cd and it went well. Could not get it to load on this 8500. USB really went smooth. I have the desktop running vga to a 32 hd tv. Trying to set up the 8500 to run to 58" panasonic via dvi/hdmi cable converter. Limited sucess att. Can't seem to get the screen to resize to desktop or vice versa. Panasonic adv computer must do the job. Wish there was some sort of monitor screen positioning/sizing tool in ubuntu.

linfidel
May 27th, 2010, 12:11 AM
What size is your desktop when you try to output to the monitor? I played around a little with my TV to see if I could watch video that way, but it turned out to be way too much trouble; this was when it was still running XP, but I think the problem is more the limitations of the Dell. The TV output was terrible, and the VGA output was decent, but too much trouble. I'd rather just watch on the Dell's screen. So, I got a Roku player to play Netflix videos, and that works wonderfully - I have a hardwired 6mb/s network connection right at my TV, so I get good quality.

Meanwhile, I somehow got Compiz working on my Dell with Karmic Koala version, and that works well. I mainly like the magnifier for certain hard to read dialogs, and also the expo window. I don't know why it decided to start working after all the times it either refused or didn't work correctly.

ruarymac
May 27th, 2010, 01:54 PM
I had the same problems you describe linfidel. I too have the Inspiron 8500 and the GeForce4 Ti 4200 graphics card. Tonight i fixed it. This is how...

I started the Synaptic Pakage Manager.
In the search box i typed 'nvidia'.
I had no idea what i was doing so i selected all items that mentioned Xorg config and any item that was described as a driver. I did not select any item with a description that said it could be removed after the installation (hope understand when you read the list).
I then applied the changes.
I waited for the downloads to download and install.
Once complete I selected 'Hardware Drivers' from the System>Administration menu.
There it informed me that i was not using the recomended driver (Version 96).
I activated version 96.
Restarted the laptop as it suggested.

I held my breath for 30 secs because thats all it takes to reboot in to 10.04.
The screen looks great. No more problem.

I hope this help you. Sorry it is a bit vague.

linfidel
May 28th, 2010, 01:30 AM
Thanks, ruarymac, for your post. That's useful information, just knowing you got it to work. Up until now, I had never even used the proprietary drivers, as they always failed to install, and I didn't think it was worthwhile. And when I tried using the one that was automatically downloaded and suggested, it made it worse.

So, did you have the blurry video until you enabled the new driver?

Maybe I'll try experimenting with a partition on the disk to see if I can repeat your success before I get rid of my existing version this time. Also, I'll write down the nVidia version I'm using for 9.1, (96.43.13).

linfidel
May 28th, 2010, 05:13 PM
Well, I did a test install on a partition of the laptop (took forever, btw; about 6 hours or more). It was bad, and at one point, I got a dialog having to do with the display driver that I couldn't read at all. I tried several times to get the nVidia driver to load, and Ubuntu said it was loaded, but the nVidia X server settings utility said I wasn't running an nVidia driver, and it wouldn't do anything (I did restart X several times). It kept saying to run "nvidia-xconfig", but that did nothing.

I then went back to my 9.1 installation, and copied the xorg.conf from /etc/X11 to my new 10.04 installation. Restarted my 10.04 system, and it worked perfectly.

In getting the nVidia driver to work for 9.1, I had added the line:

Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "True"
to
Section "Screen"

So, it seems that this is the solution to the problem.

To ruarymac:
I assume you didn't have to manually do this; it would be interesting to know if your xorg.conf file has this line. If not, it would be interesting to know what is actually in your file. If you ever feel up to it, I'd love to see it here.

Thanks...

linfidel
May 29th, 2010, 12:31 AM
I did an in-place upgrade today, and it almost worked well. :)

The graphics were fine, as it kept my nVidia settings. In fact the only problem was that I had no window border, no multiple workspaces, and most of my shortcut keys were missing from the keyboard shortcut menu - things like run program, terminal, etc. I was unable to bring up the run dialog.

I could run a terminal and enter "compiz --replace&" and get weird titlebars, but no minimize button, and it didn't quite draw correctly. Then, I went to appearance and set the theme to Ambience from Dust, the one I had previously, and everything started working normally. Amazing that something like that would have such far-reaching effects!

ruarymac
May 29th, 2010, 12:13 PM
Hi Linfidel,

This is my Xorg.config file....

# nvidia-xconfig: X configuration file generated by nvidia-xconfig
# nvidia-xconfig: version 1.0 (buildmeister@builder75) Fri Mar 12 01:42:27 PST 2010

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor0"
VendorName "Unknown"
ModelName "Unknown"
HorizSync 28.0 - 33.0
VertRefresh 43.0 - 72.0
Option "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Device0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 24
Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "True"
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Module"
Load "glx"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse0"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "auto"
Option "Device" "/dev/psaux"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Keyboard0"
Driver "kbd"
# generated from default
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Layout0"
Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0
InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Device0"
VendorName "NVIDIA Corporation"
Driver "nvidia"
Option "NoLogo" "True"
EndSection


Hope that helps. Glad to hear you got yours going.

I had the blurry video and when i tried to load the driver manually i made it worse and could not read anything. I clicked on stuff through the fuzz and eventually cliked something in the window that made it a bit better.

My install also went exceptionaly slow. I think the system hangs and stops reading the CD. I found if i moved the mouse once in a while it would briefly access the CD again. Or perhaps i was imagining it. I heard someone installed from a USB key and it work perfectly.

This laptop is now very old (about 8 years) and has never missed a beat but perhaps it is time i got a new one....

Good luck....

linfidel
May 30th, 2010, 01:26 AM
Thanks, ruarymac,

Looks like you also have that added line with "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "True". Wonder how it got there for you, but not me. Did you add it, by any chance? For the upgrade, it carried over. I didn't have the proprietary driver for 9.1 originally.

I'm not happy about not being able to boot from the live CD to fix problems, but I can use 9.1 for most things, I believe.

I'd love to get a new laptop, but I can't really justify it right now, and I'm watching my cash flow. It works OK for what I need - I have Apache, MySQL, PHP, Drupal, and everything else I need, and it works fine - much better than XP, which I keep on a small partition so I can watch Netflix movies, which don't work on Linux.

Do you have the Broadcom wireless card? Mine had one, and it seemed really problematic, so I replaced it with an Intel card for about $15 that works even off the live CD (no special drivers).

ruarymac
May 30th, 2010, 12:52 PM
No idea how that line got into the config. I never put it there. It was all automatic and i started with a fresh install so there was nothing carried over.

My laptop did not come with wireless so I stole the wireless network card out of the wifes Dell laptop but have no idea how to get it working. I wish i could though. If you have any ideas i would be glad to hear them. My onboard NIC is very intermittent in XP but works perfectly in Linux.

linfidel
May 31st, 2010, 01:17 AM
My laptop did not come with wireless so I stole the wireless network card out of the wifes Dell laptop but have no idea how to get it working. I wish i could though. If you have any ideas i would be glad to hear them. My onboard NIC is very intermittent in XP but works perfectly in Linux.Well, both work well on mine. Did you install the wireless card? Do you know what kind it was? I would recommend the Intel wireless cards, from eBay or Amazon, for around 15 or 20 dollars. I forgot the model, but I can check on mine if you want. It's either Intel Truemobile, or an Intel Pro, and once installed, it just worked in Windows and Linux with no configuration (unlike the stupid Broadcom card that came with it).