Puppy installed, worked fine then booted into black desktop

Message

Joejo · #1 Post by **Joejo** » Tue 10 Aug 2010, 23:50

I recently downloaded puppy on an old computer and it worked great when i booted from cd, But i installed on the computer and it worked great for about an hour then when i restarted the computer and booted into puppy the task bar is the only thing that i could see, i could not see any icons or background...it was just black. How do i solve this problem??

rjbrewer · #2 Post by **rjbrewer** » Wed 11 Aug 2010, 00:35

Try click on menu on left of taskbar > shutdown > restart X.

Which Puppy on what kind of computer?

Joejo · #3 Post by **Joejo** » Wed 11 Aug 2010, 01:01

puppy 5

on a compaq presario
2.6 ghz intel centrino
512 mb ram
80gb HDD

Joejo · #4 Post by **Joejo** » Wed 11 Aug 2010, 15:15

can anyone help?

kilgour · #5 Post by **kilgour** » Wed 11 Aug 2010, 18:53

Hej Joejo

Full install, or frugal?

#6 Post by **BÃ©Ã¨m** » Wed 11 Aug 2010, 19:00

Menu|shutdown|exit to prompt or ctrl-alt-backspace.
At the prompt type xorgwizard and reconfigure X.
restart X

Joejo · #7 Post by **Joejo** » Wed 11 Aug 2010, 22:08

It was a full install because the Computer didnt have an OS on it.
What happens is it installed fine everything worked properly then i restarted the screen went black. just the task bar. Then i wiped it all out and re-installed. Worked fine until i went online (Google or youtube) then the whole thing freezes and goes black.
So, im running out of ideas on what to do.

Karl Godt · #8 Post by **Karl Godt** » Thu 12 Aug 2010, 00:06

I have this sometimes too . But I am running e17 Macpup Foxy3.0/1 so I can switch by `plogout` to the really more stable `enlightenment` `xwin` windowmanager.
Switching back to `xwin jwm` repairs the `PuppyPin` automatically .
I think it might be related to rearranging icons on that desktop or new icons by new S/H/USB/SSD/Flash/PEN/Thumb-Drives.
The so called promt is also called `runlevel` "2 3" , nox , `tty` /dev/tty0/1 . There it is possible to type `login` `logout` `help` `e3` `cat` `xorgwizard` `startx` `X` `reboot` et cetera.

In the beginning when I was running at 650 MHz I had to hard poweroff the PC many times because of freezes. Now at 1050 MHz it had not been occured yet. That time after new bootup the `xorgwizard` command started mostly automatically. I always hitted [Ignore] and the wm showed up. I have more problems with my NVidia Graphic Card with AUSTRUMI - S3 800x600 works fine. Austrumi also is a small distro.
1.8.5
2.1.6
were tested by me.
It is also possible to switch to /dev/tty1/2 +2/3 by pressing C+A+F1-4 , find the process-ID of X through `ps -elF` `top` `pidof X` and `kill $PID` `kill -14 pid` . There are several kill -# numbers - Austrumi were up to 31.
BTW: MINE are Full Installs + 3xMacPup on ext2-4. And until now I can not really say which is the better extfs.

Joejo · #9 Post by **Joejo** » Thu 12 Aug 2010, 22:47

i am still having this problem im going crazy here

lapis · #10 Post by **lapis** » Fri 13 Aug 2010, 00:07

Joejo wrote:What happens is it installed fine everything worked properly then i restarted the screen went black. just the task bar.

Perhaps if you give more information. Does it look like this:

]

Or is there a blinking cursor in the top left and no task bar? Does the mouse move as normal?

You have been given a few ideas, did you try them? What happened when you restarted X?

Joejo · #11 Post by **Joejo** » Fri 13 Aug 2010, 00:14

At first it looked like that, screen blank just task bar. I then reinstalled and everything seemed to work fine. Until i went into the browser and went to, for example, youtube. Everything went black just showing the mouse and it froze. So i restarted and let everything load up again, desktop came up fine and everything seems normal until i went loaded up the browser again and it happened again. Now the problem is the desktop loads up perfect i can go into all the icons, but when i go onto the internet and load up the browser. Everything goes back, mouse freezes and i have to force restart.

lapis · #12 Post by **lapis** » Fri 13 Aug 2010, 01:49

Joejo wrote:At first it looked like that, screen blank just task bar.
Everything went black just showing the mouse and it froze.

I think the two are completely unrelated. The first looks like you just lost the Puppypin (the desktop background and icons). Restarting X will normally restart Puppypin unless it is corrupted.

The second sounds like a garden variety system crash. Perhaps related to the browser flash plugin using up all your system memory. Try turning flash off (noscript or similar browser extension). If the problem doesn't re-occur then we at least know what's causing it and then can look at remedies. You should have enough memory though with 512mb.

Karl Godt · #13 Post by **Karl Godt** » Fri 13 Aug 2010, 07:46

You should have enough memory though with 512mb.

I don`t think that 512 mb ram is enough for the long run.
The `find` command may claim a lot of ram lookink for 10 dirs deep.

I had the problem that one board recocnized a 256 mb ram rod only as 128 mb. I guess swap is added ...

`fdisk -l` and `free` commands would show . Maybe swap isn`t mounted ?
to mount swap : `swapon -a`

Karl Godt · #14 Post by **Karl Godt** » Tue 24 Aug 2010, 20:47

Want to add that I got that problem now, too .

Black screen , just taskbar like lapis described .

MENU > UTILITIES > Rxvt terminal emulator

Code: Select all

# fixitup

and the PuppyPin reappeared

(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Puppy installed, worked fine then booted into black desktop

Puppy installed, worked fine then booted into black desktop