Graphics Problems with ATI Radeon Xpress 200M in Ubuntu 10.04

[purelinuxuser]

Hello! I've been using Ubuntu on my Dell Vostro 1000 laptop since version 8.10, and I've been blown away by Lynx. The new theme looks fantastic! The filesystem is faster than ever too. I have a problem with my graphics card though... every time I start up the computer, the entire screen is corrupted with random colored stripes flashing on the screen. This happens when the boot up splash screen appears.

I think it has something with radeon modesetting, because when I turn that off using "radeon.modesetting=0" or "nomodeset" in the kernel boot options, the problem disappears. However, the boot splash is in low graphics mode (Xorg itself works fine in 1280x800), compositing doesn't work, and I'm stuck with a software rasterizer for 3D.

Any suggestions? I'm comfortable with the command line and editing config files, but I'd rather not toy around with /etc/X11/xorg.conf if it can be avoided. I have an amd64 kernel. Thanks in advance!

Edit: I am able to work around this by restarting X (Alt+SysRq+K) until the graphics card displays properly, but this is obviously very annoying and sometimes it takes a couple reboots to get that thing to work.

[alexpwnsn00b2]

i'm having the same problem

http://www.uluga.ubuntuforums.org/sh....php?t=1471701

[purelinuxuser]

My problem is like yours, but a lot more serious... you can't see anything except a bunch of random stripes. I can't even get past the login screen without resetting X a bunch of times because the screen isn't legible at all.

Sigh... I'm having all sorts of problems with this graphics card. This, X freezing when switching to virtual terminals, and even perspective views not working properly in some games and Blender.

[umberstark]

Try "pci=nomsi" instead of "nomodeset" as a boot option. There was an open bug about this in the run up to release, but it was patched and fixed for most (including me).

Resuming from suspend, on the other hand, is still horribly broken...

[purelinuxuser]

You mean this bug?
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/lu...ux/+bug/509273

Yeah, I saw that one too. I already tried "nomodeset;" that leaves me with a software rasterizer for 3D and no compositing. Plus the boot splash is in low-graphics mode. pci=nomsi doesn't seem to work for me .

I just noticed some xorg updates in Update Manager. I'll install those and try nomodeset and pci=nomsi again.
On the bright side, suspend works well for me!

[purelinuxuser]

Attached is a photo to better illustrate my problem.

[benrb]

I'm running 9.10 with no problems but get window corruption like purelinuxuser describes when trying out the 10.04 live CD. I found that this fixes my problem:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Lubuntu/Rele...aphics%20cards

[purelinuxuser]

I'm running 9.10 with no problems but get window corruption like purelinuxuser describes when trying out the 10.04 live CD. I found that this fixes my problem:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Lubuntu/Rele...aphics%20cards

I don't think that applies to me... it's for older graphics cards with 32MB of VRAM or less. My card has 128MB of VRAM. Plus, it's not window corruption... it's the ENTIRE display!

[purelinuxuser]

I noticed a bug report on the issue we're having:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...ux/+bug/562843

Doesn't seem like much is happening to fix this though.

[RavanH]

I noticed a bug report on the issue we're having:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...ux/+bug/562843

Doesn't seem like much is happening to fix this though.

Well, marking it as "affects me too" won't hurt. And if many do, it's more likely to be upped to Urgent

And I wonder if https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/lu...ux/+bug/509273 is about the same issue (looks like it to me) because that one is marked as Fix Released !