Bad Linux boot?

[d-koolest]

I'm a new user on Linux. As in I just got it installed today. Everything was going fine, I installed Red Hat, and went through some of the boot process. Then , when the text part finished, I get this horribly distorted black screen with stripes & what i think is supposed to be a graphic. The graphic is not even legible, it has what look like buttons, but it's all dark and mottled and obscured.

So my question is, did I give it the wrong screen resolution or something? What can I do to fix it?

This must sound really stupid to you experienced Linux dudes...:tol

[wonderboy2005]

i just installed rh 9 today, everything went smoothly.

first off, when it asked you to check the disk(s) for errors at the beginning, did you?

second, do you have an aftermarket gfx card installed? if so, did you set linux up to use it rather than the (most likely) integrated one?

other than that, i dont know... im a noob at linux...im just dicking around with it, but its weird compared to windows... nice tho...

[DwarfBaby]

The same thing happened to me with 7.3. There may be an easy fix but I had to reinstall to fix it.

[d-koolest]

Well, I dunno about the dfx card, I did all the checks it asked about. Maybe I'll just reinstall it.:mellow

[zaphodiv]

The distorted black screen is xwindow. Either the video card settings are wrong or
your monitor can't handle the resolution.

You can switch to a text console by holding down CTRL and ALT and pressing
one of the function keys eg F1, xwindow is probably on F7

From a text console you can log in and try running xf86config or whatever
configuration program redhat uses.

You can restart xwindow with CTRL-ALT-backspace
You can try switching screen resolution with CTRL-ALT-keypadminus or
CTRL-ALT-keypadplus.

xwindow video settings are controlled from a text file which is usually
/etc/xf86config. Make a copy when you find som settings which give you
a viewable screen.

[zaphodiv]

>/etc/xf86config

I should have written /etc/XF86Config
Linux filenames are case sensitve, blah.

[phalkon30]

I think zaphodiv is correct on this one, I had a monitor that did that with windows, it couldn't handle the screen res, not even in safe mode