Dell Inspiron 1501 + Coloured Vertical Lines

[Shadow_Walker]

When i boot off the install disc for Linux 10.04 it loads the little symbols down the bottom of the screen then they dissappear and Coloured Vertical Lines appear on my screen. How can i fix this?

I also downloaded the Text Based version of the install disc and i managed to install Linux fine but when i rebooted the Vertical Lines reappeared but i could still hear sounds so this leads me to believe it is a graphical error. Any help is much appreciated.

[Catharsis]

What graphics card do you have?

lspci | grep VGA

You can try booting into Recovery Mode. Hold down Shift while you boot and then select the recovery mode kernel.

[jscrane]

Uninstalling the radeon driver worked for me:

# apt-get remove xserver-xorg-video-radeon

I guess this causes it to use a generic driver or something, however at least the box is useable now

[Catharsis]

Hold down Shift while booting to get to grub. Then hit 'e' to edit, and remove "quiet splash". Ctrl+x to boot.

If that doesn't do anything, remove "quiet splash" again and replace it with "nomodeset".

[jjgl7]

Hold down Shift while booting to get to grub. Then hit 'e' to edit, and remove "quiet splash". Ctrl+x to boot.

If that doesn't do anything, remove "quiet splash" again and replace it with "nomodeset".

I had the same issue, the "nomodeset" option worked for me in my Dell Inspiron 1501, with a little workarounds, when I logged in, the vertical lines come back, so I go to tty1 with ctrl-alt-f1 (vertical lines showing too) and then go back to ctrl-alt-f7.

Does someone fix the issue?

Thanks a lot Catharsis,

[Catharsis]

Wait, what happens? I'm confused.

If the problem is that the fix doesn't work after you rebooted, that's because editing settings through grub doesn't make them permanent. To do that:

gksudo gedit /etc/default/grub

And add "nomodeset" to

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"

so it reads

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash nomodeset"

then save and exit. Then:

sudo update-grub

[InMyHumbleOpinion]

Installing 10.10 on to a hand me down Inspiron 1501 with what I also assume is the default video card, an ATI Raedon Xpress 1150. Install was done without any network/internet connection. I came up with the same vertical lines problem, so thanks to Shadow Walker for starting this thread that I found with my search parameters.

I did get some error messages which I believe are related to close source wireless network hardware, but those did not interfere with the install itself.

For the most part, Cartharsis' advice got me through this, so a big thanks to you Cartharsis. However, to break down the steps and give more specifics on what to do about the first install here's how I did it:

Intall disk
Once the install disk starts booting, press Ctrl-x. This will bring up an ASCII menu, with the expected list in the middle of screen (boot up without install, install, test disk, and one or two others). First though, select the language with up and down arrow keys and press enter/return (it's already on English, so just hit enter/return if that will work) from the pop up menus. Then scan the bottom line, which will have options that will pull up other menus by pressing the function keys- language is one and keyset another. To the far right, F6 for me, was "Other Options". Clicking that pulled up a menu that included "nomodeset". Arrow down to it and press enter/return and an "x" should appear to the left of "nomodeset". Press Esc to leave that pull and NOW look at the middle menu. Arrow to your choice and press enter (which I'm going to start using instead of enter/return now).

If you choose any option other than install (for instance, I did the test install disk), you'll likely have to reboot and repeat the above.

For the rest of that session, you should have no colored vertical lines UNTIL you shutdown/restart, but that will only be once you make that selection. At that point everything will run automatically and they'll disappear soon enough.

Initial boot up from installed system

Okay, I messed up here and instead of removing/replacing "quiet splash", I simply added "nomodeset" to the end. It worked for me. Otherwise, I did everything as Catharsis instructed here:

Hold down Shift while booting to get to grub. Then hit 'e' to edit, and remove "quiet splash". Ctrl+x to boot.

If that doesn't do anything, remove "quiet splash" again and replace it with "nomodeset".

Grub edit for permanent fix
Again followed Cartharsis' instructions below. Tried both with adding "nomodeset" to the end of "quiet splash" and by replacing the latter with the former. Both work for me. I still get the vertical lines AFTER I confirm shutdown/restart, but again, it doesn't interrupt the process, and so it's not up long.

Wait, what happens? I'm confused.

If the problem is that the fix doesn't work after you rebooted, that's because editing settings through grub doesn't make them permanent. To do that:

gksudo gedit /etc/default/grub

And add "nomodeset" to

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"

so it reads

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash nomodeset"

then save and exit. Then:

sudo update-grub

The only thing I would add is, even though you save the changes to grub in gedit, remember you still have to run the sudo update-grub command in the terminal. Yeah, I did forget at first.

Thanks again for the help. Out of curiosity, and if it's not trouble or too long of an explanation, what do "quite splash" and "nomodeset" do?