Arch Linux

Edo

Member

Registered: 2011-04-18

Posts: 6

[solved] Black screen on boot unless using nomodeset

Hi all, just started using Arch yesterday, seems great so far except for the following issue.

I have a new Dell XPS laptop, i7 Sandy Bridge with Nvidia 540m in optimus.  I know that I can't use the 540M for now but can't even get the Intel driver working properly.  If I don't pass "nomodeset" in grub then the screen just turns off after "waiting for udev uevents to ...." .  Ctrl-alt-delete resets the machine after a few seconds so doesn't appear to be a hard-crash, but can't get the screen back with rebooting.

X server is working in low-res but right now I can't even boot to run level 3 without nomodeset (and of course with it on I can't get proper res X).  I have the latest kernel installed (2.6.38-arch), xf86-video-intel 2.15.0-1 and mesa 7.10.2-2.  Is there something obvious I'm missing?  Thanks in advance.

Last edited by Edo (2011-04-18 06:51:19)

Edo

Member

Registered: 2011-04-18

Posts: 6

Re: [solved] Black screen on boot unless using nomodeset

Got it, adding the i915 and intel_agp modules to initramfs did the trick.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/In … modules.22