From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.4.1) Gecko/20031114 Description of problem: I have updated the bios as per the instructions for a documented bug concerning the 8MB apperture of the video card, it was one of the first things I did and xinit worked fine for a long time. But now it seems to have problems. Note: I am experiencing similar problems with Windows - minor video corruption on widgets and text panels. Even corrupt/screwy looking window widgets still work (if one can discern what widget is what!) but this is annoying as hell. Seems random what portion of the screen/window gets corrupted but also seems consistent between apps. As in the toolbar routinely garbles with IE and the left folder tree pane corrupts with Windows Explorer, Steinberg CubaseVST usually corrupts along the top portion of the window, etc etc or the "start menu" icon/logo is often corrupt. I've been experiencing this problem for a while and I did a little research online already and I've browsed through this bugzilla DB but I've found nothing close to this (hang with vertical color bars) except the already documented "845" patch which is rendered obsolete by the A29 bios update. I've also come across the X hangs on switch between virtual terminal and X but it was not often reproducable and switching between X and VT's has not hung since the early days when I first installed fedora. My guess - because this is affecting both my windows and linux installs - is that there is something majorly wrong with the gfx card in this machine but I can't find any concrete data or evidence to support the notion. Does anyone know of inconsistencies between the i830 DRM kernel module and XFree86 v4.3? I was desperate at first cause all my data/projects/code is on linux and it just wouldn't budge at all once it hung on the color lines but I've since discovered that a warm reboot from windows seems to "fix" this problem, however if I ever forget to warm boot from windows linux gives me it's usual fancy dancy useless vertical color bars and no way to escape to a VT or anything. Then I cold reboot into windows and then warm reboot into linux and viola... presto chango the no more colored linezo. WTF is up w/this? it's drivin me nuts! Thanks all, aloha. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): XFree86-4.3.0-55 How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Cold boot into linux 2. Force halt w/power button and boot WindowsXP 3. Warm reboot into linux Actual Results: after 1) linux boots fine until X tries to initialize the display at which point it hangs fully on a black screen with the top left quadrant of the screen filled with colored vertical lines. Cannot switch to virtual terminals (at least one of which I can see pop onto the screen right before X tries to init) using <ALT-F1> through <ALT-F6> and cannot force quit the X server with <CTL-ALT-Backspace> after 2) things are "normal" in the windoze stylie after 3) x boots like normal and I login w/gdm - just like nothin happened Expected Results: the x-server should have initialized like normal, like the other hundred or so times that I've booted it in the past without problems - it's only within the past weeks that this has happened to me and I've been using this fedora system for longer than that and it worked fine after fresh install. Additional info: SYSTEM ========================================= Dell Inspiron 1100 - Laptop CPU: Intel pentium 4 2.3GHz BIOS: A29 Video: Intel Corp. 82845G/GL (shared memory) Sound: Intel 82801DB AC'97 Audio Netwk: Broadcom 4400 USB CDRW LCD
You mention that you are experiencing a similar problem in both Windows and Linux. Normally I would conclude it to be a hardware problem such as bad video memory or similar, however you also mention it only occurs after the video BIOS update, so it is just as likely to be a BIOS bug introduced with the BIOS update. Since Intel video hardware uses the system RAM for video, you may be able to test this by setting the onboard memory to the smallest amount and running memtest86 to test your system memory, however that may be inconclusive. The most important observation though is that the failures are in Windows as well. That definitely points to it being a video hardware or firmware issue of some kind. I recommend contacting your motherboard vendor about this problem and getting a new BIOS update when one comes available, or putting the original BIOS back for now. Hardware issue - closing as "NOTABUG"