Software Cinema

Unfortunately... after a weekend power blackout, my Philips 200WB monitor could not display anymore in X system.

The booting message on the monitor displays fine, it just got into "SLEEP" mode when the X starts to running, and nothing shows up thereafter.

Changed the runlevel to 3, and logined in command line to check the log, the kdm.log only says: No Screens Found.

The log message may be correct, but it seems odd to me since I could see all the booting messages before the X starts to run...

If you google the message "No Screens Found" plus the keywords linux, mandriva, startx, or whatever, you might found many speculations and possible solutions, such as the corrupted xorg.conf, inconsistent package upgrading, driver problems...

I had no idea what's going on, but I did make some X system upgrades before the blackout, so I guessed maybe one of the speculations is my problem. Therefore I tried these solutions as people suggested on the web:

1. depmod -a & startx to see if it works

2. XFdrake --experts to re-configure the xorg.conf ( actually this works the same as drakconf on Display configuration )

3. Remove the original xorg.conf, use xorgconfig to generate new xorg.conf

4. Set the device and the monitor to generic options

5. Re-install the X system

6. Re-install the Mandriva ... ( Yes I did that !!! Fortunately I made the system and data partitions a clear cut, so the re-installation is quite easy )

And all of these solutions did not work, my monitor still SLEEPED ZZZzzzzzzz after the X starts to run.

Somehow I started to think : Will it be the problem of the monitor itself ?

So I changed the monitor with another Mozo LCD with D-Sub connection. Hell, my desktop is back ~!!

After a cross check, I finally figured out that the problem is on the DVI+ connection of my original Philips monitor. The connection is a DVI-D single link. The end of the link in the monitor side is not locked, and being a little loose.

I check some DVI information on the web, but I really can not figure out how it works and how this would happen. I guess there might be two causes: (1) because of the loose link, the video adapter can not acquire the correct monitor EDID, or (2) because of the loose link, some video signal (TMDS) can not transmit correctly.

Anyway, after I re-connected the DVI-D link and locked it well, the monitor functions correctly as usual :)

So, if anybody has the same problem as me, maybe you can consider check the DVI link before try any complicated solution :p