Dell Inspiron 1100 Black screen sometimes on boot

Message

teranz · #1 Post by **teranz** » Thu 11 Jul 2013, 21:13

Hi All:

Just a few days ago I got Wary Puppy going on my Dell Inspiron 1100 and decided to try Precise Puppy 5.6.1 to see how it would run. Wary had the same issues with the display, usually just before starting X the screen would go black. Sometimes it comes up just fine. My assumption is that if it was X or a driver it would be consistent, but before I ditched Windows for Puppy it seemed to work fine. I've gone through various start-up scenarios and have not found a solution that always works. This includes builds on USB and the hard drive, and before it died the CD too. I have also used debug options during start-up without a consistent result.

Any Suggestions for a fix?

Thanks-

Semme · #2 Post by **Semme** » Fri 12 Jul 2013, 01:47

Same hw Teranz.. I've learned to live with it. When X doesn't fire, XBindKeys saves the day!

rjbrewer · #3 Post by **rjbrewer** » Fri 12 Jul 2013, 02:47

I use the i810 xorg driver on my 700m Inspiron with Wary;
and vesa with Precise.
Works good.

Burn_IT · #4 Post by **Burn_IT** » Fri 12 Jul 2013, 10:14

I had similar problems with my Latitude C840.
When you install the Nvidia drivers they support Dual screen mode in that you can use the laptop display and an external monitor with different settings and different display windows.

Unfortunately it sets the external monitor as the primary display, so the laptop screen goes blank.
You need to change the xorg.conf to use the laptop screen as the primary display then everything is OK.

I did give an example a while ago when I cracked it. I'm at work now so i can't look it up, but the posts should still be there.

teranz · #5 Post by **teranz** » Sat 13 Jul 2013, 23:50

Thanks for all the good replies... this computer is fickle, I wanted to try the ideas posted here but could not get the black screen to happen, I tried at least a dozen shut downs and re-boots, no failures.

But, it does now seem to have a hard disk start-up problem. When starting cold it has trouble finding the hard drive (makes squeal noise too) and when it does boot-up it is very slow. Makes me think the black screen could be related but I'm not sure. Also, I now realize the Bios is A22, not the latest A32. I'm not sure how I will download and update the bios code (no windows anymore) but I'm thinking maybe a MS-DOS boot CD if that is possible?

I'll post what I learn here-
Thanks all!

rokytnji · #6 Post by **rokytnji** » Sat 13 Jul 2013, 23:58

makes squeal noise too

Time to start looking for a new hard drive. Mine did that on my netbook and I went with ssd on it instead. It was a pata hitachi POS 30 gig.

ide 2.5 drives cheap on ebay.

teranz · #7 Post by **teranz** » Sun 14 Jul 2013, 01:05

The drive in my Inspiron has the male connector which seems different than most I see on ebay. Is there a designation for this configuration? The connector sticks out at the back of the drive. Please see the attached photo.

teranz · #8 Post by **teranz** » Sun 14 Jul 2013, 01:20

Oops... I've learned something new! If you take the drive out of the caddy the connector as shown in my picture comes off the drive exposing the expected IDE connector pins.

slavvo67 · #9 Post by **slavvo67** » Sun 14 Jul 2013, 03:44

I've had issues with a Dell Inspiron at boot up, as well. I couldn't get any puppy to work correctly. Then... I recently tried the magical Akita Beta 15 and while it's not my favorite distro, it certainly did the trick.

It's in the Puppy Derivatives posts.

I hope this helps and all the best....

Slavvo

rokytnji · #10 Post by **rokytnji** » Sun 14 Jul 2013, 13:07

Squeaking, clicking.clunk.

http://pcsupport.about.com/od/nonworkin ... oisetb.htm

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 29f3478060

You can run it till it dies. So take your time looking for the best deal. It has happened to me before on the panasonic cf-48
It ran where it squealed one last time and then went clunk. Checking bios after
that showed me bios failed to see a hard drive any more.

That was why when I started getting freezes, continuous clicking noises, funny behaviour like slow delays on running programs on the M&A Companion Netbook I have.

I bit the bullet and just bought a brand new 64gig Solid State 1.8" zif ide drive for it which is totally different from your Dell 2.5" PATA Ide hard drive interface .

Black screen intermittent boot with noisy hard drive sounds ominous to me. But hey. It is up to you.
It is your data/gear.

If it is just a test bed/ net toy. I would not sweat it till it breaks if funds are limited and laptop is old old old.

When starting cold it has trouble finding the hard drive (makes squeal noise too) and when it does boot-up it is very slow

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Dell Inspiron 1100 Black screen sometimes on boot

Dell Inspiron 1100 Black screen sometimes on boot

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