Graphics - Weird graphical glitches with Xubuntu 14.04 including folder icons missing

[Dale_P]

I’ve just installed the above version on my ailing Dell Dimension tower PC - great to be able to get it up and running again...


The only thing is that there seems to be a strange graphics issue - some of the icons in finder windows disappear on mouseover. Also, the system has a habit of randomly highlighting text in strange colours so that it is unreadable. Very odd.


As the problem is quite difficult to explain in words, I’m made a short screencast video on Youtube to share the problem as it appears to me: http://youtu.be/VN0uQ_kjHcg


Any help greatly appreciated!

[Rob Sayer]

That's not actually a YouTube link, and I'm certainly not going to click on it.

[Dale_P]

Hi Rob,

The link I posted is a shortened version - here's the full link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VN0uQ_kjHcg

Do you know what could be causing this? I see there's not been much bite on this post, and unfortunately the folder structure of the system is rather unusable with this issue.

Thanks a lot for your time.

[dave131]

I just watched you video and indeed that is strange. What is your video adapter? Try:

lspci | grep VGA

and post the output back here.

Is this an on-board GPU or is there an actual video card?

If on-board GPU, check the BIOS settings and post back what it says for video memory.

If may be a driver problem as well.

I *think* the above information should at least get everyone started.

[Dale_P]

Thanks Dave, I've run the command and here is the output:

Try:
lspci | grep VGA
and post the output back here

.

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation NV17 [GeForce4 MX 420] (rev a3)

Is this an on-board GPU or is there an actual video card?

Not sure how to find this out? I downloaded the sysinfo package, which says this (basically the same as the above command output)


http://imgur.com/pc9baIt

If may be a driver problem as well.

I suspect this may be the case too. However, there are no items shown in the 'additional dirvers' menu.

I *think* the above information should at least get everyone started.

Hope so! do let me know if there's anything else which would be hlepful...

[monkeybrain20122]

See if this thread helps
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2228137

[dave131]

Basically, that thread lets you know that the card is not really supported in 14.04. They got it to work in Linux Mint - but that may be too heavy for your system if you had to run xubuntu. The other alternative mentioned there is linux lite. If worse comes to worse, and if this is a seperate card, you could try a different video card. However, if it's a laptop or if you are using on-board graphics (the hint would be if you are connected to a video output that is in with a bunch of ports on the back of your system, or if it's connected to something else).

[Dale_P]

Just a follow-up to this post. The issue was indeed due to a an unsupported graphics card, which was fixed by swapping the card. Everything now works fine! Thanks for all your help...