Author Topic: LMCE Hangs before AV Wizard  (Read 3189 times)

FrustratedOne

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LMCE Hangs before AV Wizard
« on: September 28, 2008, 05:57:18 am »
Well ladies and gentlemen, as my username implies I've become utterly frustrated with Linux MCE.  Not because of a lack of features or anything (at least not yet) but because I simply cannot boot into Linux MCE.  I downloaded and installed LMCE using the DVD install method.  Everything went fine, it found my harddrive and I told it to just go ahead and use the whole thing.  Installation completes, restarted, went through the long first boot process, got to just before the AV Wizard is supposed to start and it hangs.  Let me be more specific, the screen isn't blank, what I do have is a blinking cursor in the top left doing nothing.  I tried the number pressing method, tried the shift key method after the MB tone, nothing works.  My keyboard still responds because I can still restart the computer by giving the old ctrl-alt-delete salute.

Here's a rundown of what hardware I'm using:

AMD X2 4200+
Winfast 6150BK8MC Mobo (business standard, but it still would let me play Crysis after I added a newere video card)
Geforce 8600GTS 256MB video card
320GB Sata Harddrive

This whole computer is plugged in and being displayed on my TV (an older 25" tube) so as far as I can tell there is nothing wrong video-wise.  One more thing to note before I wrap this up, I got upset at one point and started mashing keys on my keyboard, at that point the cursor moved to the next line and read "starting daemon manager" or something like that.  But then it got hung up on that too!  Please help, I've been researching this for quite some time and can't find an answer.

Thanks

colinjones

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Re: LMCE Hangs before AV Wizard
« Reply #1 on: September 28, 2008, 02:26:26 pm »
obviously, as you've done your research you would be well aware that the nVidia 8600 chipset is not supported out of the box (massive overkill any way!) so this is probably the issue you are coming across :)

The blinking cursor most likely indicates that X isn't starting. Start by hitting ESC during the GRUB boot menu and choosing recovery mode. Then read through your /var/log/Xorg.0.log file. You'll probably find that there are messages describing some kind of driver issue. Either way, it is from here that you can install more recent drivers. Plenty of articles on how to do this in the wiki,..

This one for a start off http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Display_Drivers
« Last Edit: September 28, 2008, 02:28:05 pm by colinjones »

totallymaxed

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Re: LMCE Hangs before AV Wizard
« Reply #2 on: September 28, 2008, 06:03:51 pm »
Well ladies and gentlemen, as my username implies I've become utterly frustrated with Linux MCE.  Not because of a lack of features or anything (at least not yet) but because I simply cannot boot into Linux MCE.  I downloaded and installed LMCE using the DVD install method.  Everything went fine, it found my harddrive and I told it to just go ahead and use the whole thing.  Installation completes, restarted, went through the long first boot process, got to just before the AV Wizard is supposed to start and it hangs.  Let me be more specific, the screen isn't blank, what I do have is a blinking cursor in the top left doing nothing.  I tried the number pressing method, tried the shift key method after the MB tone, nothing works.  My keyboard still responds because I can still restart the computer by giving the old ctrl-alt-delete salute.

Here's a rundown of what hardware I'm using:

AMD X2 4200+
Winfast 6150BK8MC Mobo (business standard, but it still would let me play Crysis after I added a newere video card)
Geforce 8600GTS 256MB video card
320GB Sata Harddrive

This whole computer is plugged in and being displayed on my TV (an older 25" tube) so as far as I can tell there is nothing wrong video-wise.  One more thing to note before I wrap this up, I got upset at one point and started mashing keys on my keyboard, at that point the cursor moved to the next line and read "starting daemon manager" or something like that.  But then it got hung up on that too!  Please help, I've been researching this for quite some time and can't find an answer.

Thanks

As Colin has already said i would think this is almost certainly down to the 8600 card which is not properly detected by the AVwizard. Get yourself an nVidia 6200 or 7300 card - these are detected and supported properly... and save yourself a lot of frustration ;-)

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FrustratedOne

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Re: LMCE Hangs before AV Wizard
« Reply #3 on: September 28, 2008, 09:27:53 pm »
obviously, as you've done your research you would be well aware that the nVidia 8600 chipset is not supported out of the box (massive overkill any way!) so this is probably the issue you are coming across :)

The blinking cursor most likely indicates that X isn't starting. Start by hitting ESC during the GRUB boot menu and choosing recovery mode. Then read through your /var/log/Xorg.0.log file. You'll probably find that there are messages describing some kind of driver issue. Either way, it is from here that you can install more recent drivers. Plenty of articles on how to do this in the wiki,..

This one for a start off http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Display_Drivers

Thanks for the response.  I boot into recovery mode and I'm looking at the terminal.  I'm fairly unfamiliar with terminal commands so how would one go about reading the Xorg log file from within terminal?

***UPDATE***

NVM, got it working!
« Last Edit: September 28, 2008, 10:02:56 pm by FrustratedOne »

Marie.O

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Re: LMCE Hangs before AV Wizard
« Reply #4 on: October 01, 2008, 01:52:56 pm »
Now you need to change your nick :)

rgds
Oliver

colinjones

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Re: LMCE Hangs before AV Wizard
« Reply #5 on: October 02, 2008, 02:47:33 am »
Agreed Oliver!

For completeness, frustratedone...

Use

less /var/log/Xorg.0.log

to view log files... To edit them I use the joe editor which you need to install. To install

sudo apt-get install joe

On that point, some commands (or some files they act upon) require root privileges, such as apt-get install. To do that on a command by command basis prefix the command with:

sudo

like above. It will prompt you for a password which will be the password of the account you are currently using. In LMCE this is almost always the linuxmce account, whose password is also linuxmce

Once installed:

joe /etc/X11/xorg.conf

To change directories:

cd <directory path>

to list what is in a directory:

ls -al

Don't forget that in the shell most commands and file names/paths can be completed by hitting <TAB> half way through the command/filename

Anything else you need to know?