Video Problems with Dell Optiplex 745

seanhly · 2016-07-15 00:50:26

I recently bought a second hand Dell Optiplex 745 small form desktop. I noticed soon after that the machine doesn't have much of a graphics card. The memory used for graphics card is drawn from the ram itself. I have 1GB of installed RAM, which should be enough to play a movie. Anyway, the linux kernel seems to load fine, until the system recognises the screen. This would be the point during boot up that the size of the writing on screen is altered to match the dimensions of the screen (usually making the text smaller).

At this point, the screen goes black (backlight is still on), sometimes blue, or green, or some other solid colour. And this is the weird part, the computer itself freezes up, I notice I can no longer turn the Caps Lock or Num Lock on or off on the keyboard. Normally when you press the power button outside of a GUI at this point, the computer shuts down, but now with the machine frozen, nothing happens. So the problem transcends graphics.

i would be fine with it if the graphics didn't work, but the machine was still going. I could make a useful server machine in that case, but screen or no screen, the machine always halts at the point when graphics normally begin to take effect.

I managed to get past login with a different RAM chip, and load lxqt. But when I try to play something in VLC, the same thing happens again. Screen goes blank, computer freezes.

Similar problems occur when I boot into Puppy Linux from a CD.

Any idea what this could be? I'm stumped.

Regards,

Seán

Trilby · 2016-07-15 02:19:21

Try bottom with the nomodeset kernel parameter, at least for diagnostic purposes. If that works, you might be interested in trying other kernel versions (e.g., LTS) or perhaps worst case just having a working system without much of a GUI.

Arch Linux

#1 2016-07-15 00:50:26

Video Problems with Dell Optiplex 745

#2 2016-07-15 02:19:21

Re: Video Problems with Dell Optiplex 745

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