Opened 4 years ago

Last modified 4 years ago

#16661 new bug

Intel 915GM video mode switching leaves laptop with black screen with both native and VESA drivers.

Reported by: leppy232 Owned by: pulkomandy
Priority: normal Milestone: Unscheduled
Component: Drivers/Graphics/intel_extreme/9xx Version: R1/beta2
Keywords: Cc:
Blocked By: Blocking:
Platform: x86

Description (last modified by pulkomandy)

The Intel driver bundled with Beta 2 works fine, if sluggishly and with some graphical glitches (due probably more to the age of the chip), but using a screen resolution besides the native 1024x768 leaves it with a blank screen--usually seen when using programs in full screen. In an effort to remedy this, I switched to the VESA driver with the keyboard shortcut, and it left me with the same blank screen. Trying to invoke the boot options menu leaves me with another blank screen. I can't get past this.

Attachments (3)

syslog_VESA (140.8 KB ) - added by leppy232 4 years ago.
VESA syslog
syslog_SCAE (146.7 KB ) - added by leppy232 4 years ago.
Keyboard shortcut syslog
syslog_Regular_640x480 (173.6 KB ) - added by leppy232 4 years ago.
Syslog for changing the video mode through GUI

Download all attachments as: .zip

Change History (9)

comment:1 by nephele, 4 years ago

switching to vesa with a keyboard shortcut, what do you mean by this?

Invoking the boot menu while booting should work fine since it's still in text mode then afaik, either holding shift or mashing space should bring it up. (and then you should be able to select failsafe graphics)

in reply to:  1 comment:2 by leppy232, 4 years ago

Replying to nephele:

switching to vesa with a keyboard shortcut, what do you mean by this?

Invoking the boot menu while booting should work fine since it's still in text mode then afaik, either holding shift or mashing space should bring it up. (and then you should be able to select failsafe graphics)

The shift-control-alt-escape combo documented here. https://www.haiku-os.org/docs/userguide/en/preferences/screen.html

It turns out safe mode did end up starting up after a very long time, but selecting failsafe graphics (which I imagine just loads the very same VESA driver I'm having issues with) nets me the exact same result as normal booting does.

comment:3 by shaka, 4 years ago

One thing you could try is to delete /boot/home/config/settings/Screen_data and reboot.

in reply to:  3 comment:4 by leppy232, 4 years ago

Replying to shaka:

One thing you could try is to delete /boot/home/config/settings/Screen_data and reboot.

I tried that, but it didn't work. I booted into a Haiku USB and copied its known good Screen_data over to the install, I'll see if that works. It didn't, but I ended up solving it with what in hindsight ought to have been the obvious solution: just going into another workspace.

Last edited 4 years ago by leppy232 (previous) (diff)

comment:5 by pulkomandy, 4 years ago

Component: Drivers/Graphics/VESADrivers/Graphics/intel_extreme/9xx
Description: modified (diff)
Owner: changed from nobody to pulkomandy
Summary: VESA fallback driver leaves Intel 915GM laptop with black screen.Intel 915GM video mode switching leaves laptop with black screen with both native and VESA drivers.

There is some confusion here. The shift-control-alt-escape does not switch to the VESA driver. It just switches to a safe video mode (probably 1024x768 or 800x600 with 16bit or 256 colors? I could not find where this is implemented in the code...).

The "failsafe graphics driver" option in the boot menu does switch to the VESA driver, which is a completely different thing.

If you're having graphics glitches to start with, and both of the drivers fail in some way, it sounds a bit worrying. Are you sure the hardware is ok? Does it work with other OS?

For further investigation, please provide syslogs for the following situations (make sure to delete the syslog from /system/var/log/syslog between each test to have results for just oen boot in each):

  • Booting with the failsafe graphics driver enabled
  • Booting normally, then changing the video mode

by leppy232, 4 years ago

Attachment: syslog_VESA added

VESA syslog

by leppy232, 4 years ago

Attachment: syslog_SCAE added

Keyboard shortcut syslog

by leppy232, 4 years ago

Attachment: syslog_Regular_640x480 added

Syslog for changing the video mode through GUI

in reply to:  5 comment:6 by leppy232, 4 years ago

Replying to pulkomandy:

There is some confusion here. The shift-control-alt-escape does not switch to the VESA driver. It just switches to a safe video mode (probably 1024x768 or 800x600 with 16bit or 256 colors? I could not find where this is implemented in the code...).

The "failsafe graphics driver" option in the boot menu does switch to the VESA driver, which is a completely different thing.

If you're having graphics glitches to start with, and both of the drivers fail in some way, it sounds a bit worrying. Are you sure the hardware is ok? Does it work with other OS?

For further investigation, please provide syslogs for the following situations (make sure to delete the syslog from /system/var/log/syslog between each test to have results for just oen boot in each):

  • Booting with the failsafe graphics driver enabled
  • Booting normally, then changing the video mode

Sorry for taking so long, I kinda forgot about this. I have three logs, one VESA and two different methods of changing the video mode (the normal way and the keyboard shortcut). VESA failsafe actually worked, I don't know why it failed on me that time. I'm guessing it tried to run at 800x600.

As for other OSes, Windows NT (both 3.51 and 5.x) run just fine with both their native drivers and custom ones (VBEMP and the native 915GM drivers resp.) and Linux is the same. Both handle multiple resolutions just fine. ReactOS doesn't, but that's just it not liking the chip, it's a known issue for it; it runs with generic VESA drivers but honestly pretty terribly. I haven't tried 9x, Rhapsody, Dano, or OS/2, but I feel like NT and Linux are enough to say that the chip itself is alright.

Last edited 4 years ago by leppy232 (previous) (diff)
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