i just recently installed Red Hat 6.1 Linux on my machine and when it asked for a monitor mine wasn't listed and so i chose custom, but i dont have a book for the refresh rates on my monitor or anything. I finally got it to accept a refresh rate and that other info. but when it loads up my GNOME GUI i can see the redhat linux guy, the GNOME paw and a little white box where i enter some type of information, but there are black bars on the screen, which i assume would be text telling me what to enter, but there is no text and just black bars. is ther a way i could get a driver for my monitor to install it or anything. i have a LEO monitor.
I have the same problem. I upgraded from a 6.0 GNOME installation, and had this problem, along with cursor problems (cursor is fuzzy except when placed over graphical login box, cursor occasionally turns into white square), root window problems (root window is fine when some pixmaps are displayed, but completely black with the standard background), and an order of magnitude slow-down. I did a fresh install, and had the same problems. The only text that comes out properly is the labels for the icons in the root window, and the "no articles found" message in SlashApp. I am using a supported monitor (NEC Multisync 4fg), but an unsupported video card (not a card, actually, I'm presently using built-in video support on an Asus mainboard). The psuedo-video card doesn't probe correctly, of course, but I know it's 4 MB (it tells me so at startup) and I enter "No clockchip." This is on an AMD K6, if that matters.
I tried switching to WindowMaker (not easy with no visible text!) and had the same problems, and so concluded it was not E. I did a fresh install, but this time with the standard KDE install. The cursor wasn't fuzzy anymore, but all the other problems are still there--I guess it's not GNOME. I'll entering this bug in another category. Sorry about clogging everyone's box.
As you say, this must be an X server bug. X clients shouldn't be able to mangle the cursor for example.
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 6970 ***