I installed openSUSE 11.1 on my laptop last night to dual-boot with an existing Windows XP install, and after a few configuration struggles the system is working nicely, except for one thing: if I boot into Windows after being in SUSE, my Windows graphics driver fails to load and I have to reboot again, which seems to fix the problem. I have a Thinkpad T500 with an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3650 card. Ideas?
I would boot into Windows uninstall the device that search for hardware changes and reinstall the driver.
In some cases Windows can be deceived by the power being on into believing that it does not need to reload certain things and the solution is to power off. I haven’t heard of it happening to a graphics driver but it is consistent with your symptoms.
John, do you mean that rather than rebooting, I need to shut down and then turn on the computer again?
vwbond, I will try that now.
If it helps, it seems that after I boot into Windows, the next time I boot into SUSE it asks me to select the video mode, but this doesn’t happen when I reboot into SUSE from SUSE. So it seems to me that the graphics drivers may be interfering with each other? I don’t know how… >_<
John, do you mean that rather than rebooting, I need to shut down and then turn on the computer again?
I’m sure that’s what he means. Allow a good few seconds before powering up again.
Okay, I have tried both solutions and neither works. I noticed that as well as not loading my graphics driver, Windows doesn’t let me use Standby on first boot after Linux, so it looks like there may be more problems. I’ve added the problem to my very long list of things to ask Lenovo support when they finally let me talk to a tech (they lost my serial number somehow and wouldn’t put me through because it wasn’t in their database). Broken touchpad, bluescreens everywhere, applications crashing…
Depending on the model you could probably get a replacement touchpad on ebay for 20-$35 dollars. The bluescreens are another stories that their tech support may or may not be able to help you with. I would get the part you need online, then backup you files on the Windows side of the house [use external media] and reinstall. Use Windows F.A.S.T so make things move a little faster. What model Lenovo you have?
Depending on the model, you could probably get a replacement touchpad on ebay for 20-$35 dollars. The bluescreens are another story that their tech support may or may not be able to help with. I’d get the part you need online, then backup your files from the Windows side of the house [use external media] and reinstall. Use Windows F.A.S.T to make things move a little faster. What model Lenovo you have?
I have a brand-new T500, and while I know I can get a replacement part fairly cheaply, since it’s under warranty I’d like to make use of that (the touchpad was broken out of the box). I received the laptop two weeks ago, called their support line the next morning and discovered that my laptop didn’t exist in their database, something which apparently has never happened before. For the last two weeks I’ve been waiting for them to put my details into their warranty database; on the bright side, I’ve managed to find more errors in the meantime. The bluescreens I’m getting point to either faulty hardware or a broken Windows install, but since the only reinstallation media I have were created from said Windows install I’m not sure they’ll be a great deal of help. (I use Windows and Linux fairly equally for different things, and would rather not just dump Windows.)
Install Windows into a VirtualBox and see if that can meet your requirements of using Windows. If that is the case, then, you don’t have to directly boot into Windows.
I am suggesting this because Windows under VB does not require all those special drivers for the machine’s hardware. This will eliminate chasing bugs related to them.
This problem could be due to your T500 having to graphic chips - an Intel one for low power consumption and an ATI one for high 3d performance. (What does the command “sudo lspci | grep VGA” show in a Linux console?)
Windows is capable to switch between those depending on your needs and your power configuration.
However, Linux is not able to do this but maybe behaves if it was, thus messing up the setting Windows remembers from last time. You could try to go into the BIOS (hit F1 during boot) and in the graphics settings pick one of the two chips and also (!) disable the option to let the OS set the selected chip.
Then try switching between Linux and Windows a few times to see if this fixes the problem.
The problem with this is that you have to choose one of the two chips “permanently” in the BIOS, either taking away low power or high performance until you change the BIOS setting again.
This is just a though based on several assumption, but trying those steps cannot do any harm 