No Video Signal On Live Session

[11ryanc]

Hi everyone,
I've been looking into installing SolydK for myself on a second partition. However I'm facing some problems trying to boot up the live session. My BIOS reads the disk and sends boot signal to it, however once it makes it to the desktop I have a completely blank video signal. Desktop is never visible. I've had the exact issue with every other Debian/Ubuntu derivative as well. I was able to get Manjaro going once, but only because on the CD it had an option to boot without free drivers.
Attached are my specs below. Is it possible this is due to having a dedicated GPU connected to this A6-3500 APU?
Would appreciate any suggestions. Been trying to resolve this June.

[Arjen Balfoort]

Hi 11ryanc, and welcome to our forum!

Unfortunately, your specs were not attached to your opening post, but I have to admit, I'm not familiar with the GPU configuration you describe.

There are some things you can check/try first:

• Check that the md5sum of the file equals the one mentioned on the download page.
• During live boot you can hit [Enter] when you see the countdown. This will bring you to a menu. Did you try to boot with "compatibility mode"?

[11ryanc]

Hi 11ryanc, and welcome to our forum!

Unfortunately, your specs were not attached to your opening post, but I have to admit, I'm not familiar with the GPU configuration you describe.

There are some things you can check/try first:

• Check that the md5sum of the file equals the one mentioned on the download page.
• During live boot you can hit [Enter] when you see the countdown. This will bring you to a menu. Did you try to boot with "compatibility mode"?

Sorry about that. I was having some connection issues. I didn't even think this thread was posted. Yes I did use Compatibility Mode, same situation. Here are the specs:
There is no sort of Crossfire or anything going on here. The CPU has it's own dedicated video, but I bypass that and have my own GPU hooked up. It's a Radeon 6670.

[disciple1964]

Hello,

I have a A6-3300 with the same motherboard. However, I am using the onboard video. I have not had any issues other than getting past the UEFI bios. Let me ask you this? You said you bypassed the onboard to use the discrete video card.

1. Did you disable the onboard video completely?
2. How are you bypassing the onboard video?
3. Does it give you any errors at all?
4. Have you check to make sure you have the latest bios?

While I never had to use compatability mode, I did have issues due to the UEFI, that would produce a black screen even though it stated linux installed fine. Also I assume you have the monitor connected to the correct video card port. Also are you getting this in the LIVE CD mode, or does it allow you to install the OS and then give you a blank screen? I have never experience any issues with linux using the free drivers with a AMD video card, Now Nvidia is a whole different beast, and can be quite a task at getting it to work.

Try booting or installing with the on-board video and see if you get the same issue, If not, then you have narrowed it down to the discrete video card you are using. While it may work when booting via the bios, once it post and then relies on the drivers of the OS, that may be where the problem lies, but until you do a little more narrowing down, the issue could be anything.

The fact you are in windows, shows the card is working, so we know to rule out a bad video card. What desktop are you using also, KDE or GNOME. I had issues with gnome based desktops on my system, but KDE installed without a hiccup and works flawlessly.

Hope this helps

[11ryanc]

Hello,

I have a A6-3300 with the same motherboard. However, I am using the onboard video. I have not had any issues other than getting past the UEFI bios. Let me ask you this? You said you bypassed the onboard to use the discrete video card.

1. Did you disable the onboard video completely?
2. How are you bypassing the onboard video?
3. Does it give you any errors at all?
4. Have you check to make sure you have the latest bios?

While I never had to use compatability mode, I did have issues due to the UEFI, that would produce a black screen even though it stated linux installed fine. Also I assume you have the monitor connected to the correct video card port. Also are you getting this in the LIVE CD mode, or does it allow you to install the OS and then give you a blank screen? I have never experience any issues with linux using the free drivers with a AMD video card, Now Nvidia is a whole different beast, and can be quite a task at getting it to work.

Try booting or installing with the on-board video and see if you get the same issue, If not, then you have narrowed it down to the discrete video card you are using. While it may work when booting via the bios, once it post and then relies on the drivers of the OS, that may be where the problem lies, but until you do a little more narrowing down, the issue could be anything.

The fact you are in windows, shows the card is working, so we know to rule out a bad video card. What desktop are you using also, KDE or GNOME. I had issues with gnome based desktops on my system, but KDE installed without a hiccup and works flawlessly. No there is BIOS lock or anything of the sort.

Hope this helps

The pc is custom built, but I didn't assemble it myself. Purchased it built up in it's current state, so not quite sure how they setup some of this. I also use MBR partition for Windows. No EUFI Part of the reason I went the custom route was to have ease of use at setting up the software of my choice, that being Vista SP2 and a nice Debian OS. The BIOS is completely up to date, in the past I had some POST problems so it was needed. This was done about half a year ago. I never get any kind of error, at all. It boots straight into an empty black screen. My display itself reports no video signal from this point. Tbh I'm not sure how to temporarily uninstall the graphics, noob as that sounds. I mean I have an idea. I'm mostly familiar with the board management. Wanna slap an FM2 socket and 8320 in here. 3 cores and 2 GHz is becoming a nuisance to me
And as said above, Manjaro worked only with the free drivers disabled. Otherwise same prob. But that was with GPU connected
Desktop is the *K edition, so KDE. Not a fan of GNOME or Unity.

[Zill]

...Tbh I'm not sure how to temporarily uninstall the graphics, noob as that sounds...

The easiest way, IMHO, is simply to power-down and unplug the PC then take the cover off and completely remove the Radeon 6670 card. Connect a standard VGA monitor to the display socket on the motherboard and then power the machine back up with a SolydXK live DVD or USB connected. If you still have no video then something else is wrong but this may simply be a misconfiguration of the BIOS display options that can easily be rectified.

If the SolydXK live session boots up and runs correctly you can then proceed to install the system on to your hard-drive. Once it has been installed and rebooted you can verify the system works correctly using the on-board graphics.

It is then possible, if required, to re-install the Radeon 6670 card and, when you reboot the machine, see if any alternative drivers are available via the SolydXK Device Driver Manager (DDM) and, if so, see if these work correctly.

Caveat: I have no personal experience of these cards as I avoid proprietary graphics cards precisely because they can be "troublesome" to say the least! On-board graphics, particularly Intel, generally "just work"!

[kurotsugi]

if you want a graphic, try with "nomodeset" on your boot parameter then see if it works or not. else, you can use "xforcevesa". xforcevesa on most cases will work but it's ugly and slow.

[11ryanc]

I believe I will be able to use my GPU once an alternate driver is installed. Dedicated card on Manjaro ran like a champ, because free drivers where bypassed as I said. Just not an Arch person really. Package Manager was fantastic though.
Thanks for the insight everyone, will try once I get the chance.
Say the Driver Manager detects nothing though, what command would I run to grab Catalyst? Also I am a little new to using Debian, and I've hit some compatibility bumps with packages before via virtualization. .deb incompatibilities, Terminal lacking it. But no way I'm going the Buntu route, rolling is the path I want. Anything I should note?

[kurotsugi]

if you prefer the manual way,
https://wiki.debian.org/ATIProprietary