Fedora 7 in MS Virtual PC 2007 - Display problems at boot.

I'm attempting to install Fedora as a virtual machine under MS Virtual PC 2007. I've tried both FC5 and the new F7, but I'm having similar display problems with both. I'm going to concentrate on the F7 problem, since I won't care about FC5 if we can solve it.

On my first installation attempt I went with the GUI install. I let it check the downloaded .ISO and the image passed. The next displayed information was about anaconda starting. After that, the Virtual PC window went black. There was no apparent activity for over 30 minutes.

I reset the vm and started over, this time taking the text install option. This went smoothly and got as far as rebooting.

After the reboot, the window shows a distorted Fedora graphic across the middle third of the screen from side to side. This remains in place while the usual status updates scroll by on the top third of the window. The bottom third remains blank. Eventually I get to a text login prompt. After I respond to that, the password prompt is partially obscured by the distorted graphic in the middle. The system appears to accept my credentials, and I assume I get a command prompt, but I can't see what's going on behind the graphic. If I enter startx, the screen clears the previous command lines, but the distorted graphic remains.

The system is a new Dell Optiplex 745 running XP SP2. 4 gig of RAM, 80 gig HD, of which I gave the vm 20 gig. The video card is a new Radeon X1300 with 256 meg. I'm captured the F7 .ISO as a virtual DVD within the vm.

Any help would be appreciated.

Tags: software, linux, virtual pc, fedora 7

CharlieSpencer_Palmetto

21st Jun 2007

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Answers (5)

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I'm positive it's a video driver problem

Try booting in run level 3. I'm betting the graphic driver is out of range or is being used funky the VPC.

That help?

jmgarvin

21st Jun 2007

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My first reaction is always to ask here. After posting, I looked around the other usual suspects (Google Linux, LQuestions, Fedora Forums, etc.) I found several references and even some screen shots showing the same problem under the same circumstances. There are several work arounds, including a variety of ways of changing the default driver. However, it looks like the easiest thing to do is run it under VMware instead of MS Virtual PC. Nobody's reported any problem with that virtual manager. I'll try level 3, but I'm probably going to move it to VMware anyway.

Thanks.

CharlieSpencer_Palmetto 21st Jun 2007

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It seems less buggy and it tends to be a little faster on the lower system specs.

jmgarvin 22nd Jun 2007

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I already had Virtual PC installed to test the free Vista Enterprise vm, so I thought I'd give it a shot.

I didn't even bother try run level 3 under VPC. Since there are no conflicts between the two vm packages, I loaded the free VMware Server product and started from scratch. F7 came up clean all the way.

Thanks.

CharlieSpencer_Palmetto 25th Jun 2007

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At school (Computer Network Systems) we use VPC 2007. When we went to install VPC and then Fedora 5, our instructor informed us that our effort would be wasted if we failed to lower our color display settings to under a million. At the time he said this I was looking at the garbled screen you described. When I went back and did it with the lower color settings and 3MB of ram more than half (515 instead if 512)the Fedora ran perfectly and has done so since. I hope this helps. Additionally, my host machine is a Dell Latitude 110L with 1.24 RAM and a 1.7 CPU XP pro SP2 and VPC 2007.

cmkeiser@... 22nd Aug 2007

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I abandoned VPC07 for VMware Server.

CharlieSpencer_Palmetto 22nd Aug 2007

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@cmkeiser,

Would you be willing to share the details of how and what you did to get this to work. I am afraid I did not understand from your post.

Thanks

wetzel-lp@... 23rd Aug 2007

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when you say lower color setting where do you do that, resolution 800x600? Color quality 16 bit? I try but nothing happens, still the same issue. what else could be.

thanks

edgardro@... 2nd Mar 2008

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once you are in at runlevel 3 then
cd /etc/X11
vi xorg.conf
Find the lines that have the Display depth at 32 or 24, change the 32 or 24 to 16!
This prevents the screen from being too large!

Then add this line (to fix the mouse problem):
in the Section "Screen"
add this line in the
SubSection "Display" :
Option "HWCursor" "off"
#enter the line exactly as it appears above
(before the EndSubSection)
Close vi with ZZ or :wq
Now reboot or enter: init 5

phxheat07@... 14th Dec 2008

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0 Votes

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Has anyone tried this?

This worked for me when doing fedora core 6 (or maybe 5, can't recall right now) but your symptoms sound the same. Good luck.

http://davidbrunelle.com/2006/09/23/installing-fedora-core-on-microsoft-virtual-pc-2004/

mluck

12th Jul 2007

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I dropped MS VPC 07 for VMware Server Console and didn't have problem. I went to the link you posted and added that as another potential solution.

Thanks!

CharlieSpencer_Palmetto 13th Jul 2007

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The following is from a note that i used to fix the problem last year when i required fedora to run on VPC 2007.

Fedora Core 6 doesnt like running in 24bit mode.

Linux Fedora Core ? Solve VIDEO problems

Enter into directory ?Etc/X11?

Type in the following once in etc/x11
vi xorg.conf

Change video settings from 24 to 16bit

Press [Esc] then type :wq to save

After logging in

Type in startx to start fedora in graphical mode

x_aray@... 15th Jul 2008