ATI dirver problem

  • axeman71
Posted: Sun, 04/19/2009 - 15:57
Newbie here running 3 alpha. I have a Radeon X800 GTO video card and wanted to get 2 monitors up and running. I went to the AMD site and downloaded and installed the 9.3 linux drivers. Everything seemed to install OK but I would get an error when I tried to run the ATI control center saying that the driver wasn't installed. I rebooted thinking that might help. On reboot, after entering my username and password I got I blank white screen with a mouse pointer. Nothing else. How do I fix the install or revert to whatever the original drivers were?
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drivers

  • Quentin Harley
  • 05/24/07
  • Mon, 04/20/2009 - 05:52
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To activate a GPU driver you have to change the driver line in your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file. There are numerous how-to instructions in the interwebs for debian and ubuntu that can guide you through this. (And a couple on this forums as well) Cheers, Quentin

Finally got things working.

  • axeman71
  • 04/19/09
  • Mon, 04/20/2009 - 22:57
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Finally got dual monitors working. After a reinstall to get things working again I downloaded the latest drivers from the ATI page then followed their instructions to install them. After reboot, a white screen. I then made the following additions to my xorg.conf file:

Under the Modules section I added:
Load "bitmap"
Load "extmod"
Load "freetype"
Load "int10"
Load "vbe"
Load "glx"
Load "dbe"
Load "dri"
Load "v4l"

Then at the end of the file I added:

Section "Extensions"
Option "Composite" "Disable"
EndSection

I believe this second change made the difference but if you are having problems I would suggest both changes.

Edit - I can't get it to format correctly. Under the modules section each Load command should be on a separate line. ( Edit - Fixed ;-) Quentin)

Ok I finally had to

  • axeman71
  • 04/19/09
  • Mon, 04/20/2009 - 01:45
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Ok I finally had to reinstall Studio64 because I couldn't get my drivers set back up. Now everything is working fine with the default driver (what ever it is because I can't figure out were to look up what driver it is using). As before, good performance but I can't use dual monitors except in clone mode. I went to synaptic and downloaded the xorg-driver-fglrx package which I take to be the ATI proprietary driver. However after synaptic downloaded it and installed it nothing changed. I went to the Hardware Drivers application under Administration but it does not list any proprietary drivers there. How am I suppose to activate the driver synaptic downloaded?

nVidia user here

  • skullnotions
  • 09/29/07
  • Sun, 04/19/2009 - 17:46
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You are Dual booting? if so with what other OS? The nvidia users are all waiting on kernel source & headers integration before they can move forward. Did you backup your xorg.conf before trying to install the drivers? If not maybe someone else who is an ati user could post their xorg.conf in paste.ubuntu to try to rescue your system. Here's my default install xorg.conf but I don't know how it would compare to your default config. Dave default xorg.conf Could an ati user paste their xorg.conf here to compare. Cheers Dave. Update: oops posted at the same time:)

Ok I booted into repair mode

  • axeman71
  • 04/19/09
  • Sun, 04/19/2009 - 17:33
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Ok I booted into repair mode and reset the x-server and got my desktop back up but at a very basic 800x600 resolution. I uninstalled the ATI driver and rebooted but I'm still using the basic driver. I went to synaptic and installed the ATI driver I found there but nothing happened. Even after reboot I can only run at 800x600. Any suggestions?