I just installed openSuse 13.1 on my HP Pavillion a1022n. It is an old XP machine. I am using a HP vs15c monitor. I believe the graphics card is a nvidia but which one I do not know (forgot to check before I started the install). The install moved along very well until the end when all of a sudden a message appeared on the monitor to change the resolution to 1024 x 768 @ 60 Hz. The monitor was already set to this resolution. The computer boots, but on the monitor I get 13 columns of what appears to be Korean characters in various levels of readability in fuschia. I am at my wits end on how to resolve this problem. According to my research, the necessary nvidia driver should be in the files I installed. I cannot get to a command prompt to check anything out or make any changes. Anyone have any suggestions for me???
IMHO it’s the NVIDIA indeed. Did you try booting "Advanced … - … (recovery mode)? That should at least give you a working desktop, though with low resolution. Please get back here and tell us if the situation improves.
A thing we can’t rule out yet, is hardware failure, i.e. the monitor, the VGA cable, the NVIDIA card.
I tried booting in recovery mode and the monitor did the same thing. Though while booting the monitor works. I hooked the monitor up to my win 8 machine using the same VGA cable and it works just fine. Hooked my win 8 monitor up to the linux machine and it did not work, same small fuschia charcters though in diaginol rows. I am next going to open the box and see if I can determine for sure what graphics card I have.
I opened up the box, and did not find a separate graphics card. So what graphics there is appears to be integrated on the motherboard and is now totally unknown. I have two full slots open and would not be adverse to obtaining a new card if that would help matters. I would like a recommendation of a good card for linux though.
I came up with 2 different graphics cards. One was an ATI Radeon 9800 and the other was a Creative Labs CT6870. I tried the ATI first. The monitor was still garbled, only in a new manner. I then installed the Creative Labs card, the monitor came up and the and the OS finished installing. I now have an operating machine to upgrade and play with.