getting back from a black screen

Bill Davidsen davidsen at tmr.com
Mon Apr 8 17:41:36 UTC 2013


Tim Evans wrote:
> On 04/08/2013 11:24 AM, Tim wrote:
>> Allegedly, on or about 08 April 2013, Richard Vickery sent:
>>> In the case where you have sensitive information that you don't want
>>> people looking at it, or children deleting it, how does one get back
>>> from this screen without rebooting and losing ones work?
>>
>> As soon as you go for the mouse or keyboard, a logon prompt appears for
>> you to type in the password.
>>
>> If that's not happening, then it's not a screensaver lockout that you're
>> facing.  But most likely a graphics crash.  Sometimes that's caused by a
>> screensaver, some of them are just not that well written, and crash when
>> they're fired up.
>>
>
> Don't mean to take this too OT, but this is now sounding like the regular
> "graphics crash" I have whenever I wake my laptop up from hibernation.  Happens
> consistently with all 3.8.x kernels so far; not with the last 3.7.x kernel.

If you have an ATI/Radeon video setup and are using the stock kernel driver 
instead of the vendor driver, I've seen this before. There are two ways to 
attack this:
1 - install the vendor driver for your kernel
     (I have not had any problems doing this but your computer will be impure)
2 - you can try adding "nomodset" to the kernel command via editing at boot
     time (in case it totally screws up your video). I have had this work
     in about 30% of the machines I tested.

Like any advice regarding kernel command options and/or vendor drivers, use your 
own judgement, this is history of my experience, not advice.

-- 
Bill Davidsen <davidsen at tmr.com>
   "We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from
the machinations of the wicked."  - from Slashdot


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