Suse 11.1 versus Failsafe Suse on boot

Recently I installed Suse 11.1 KDE 4.1 on my machine. When I boot suse it displays in 1024x768 res using VESA drivers. I recently downloaded some updates and upon restart i wasn’t able to get to desktop. I’ve tried various commands to configure my res:

sax2 -r -m 0=vesa
Doesn’t work(resolution issue, and X-server can’t load(w/e that is…))

sax2 -a
Autoconfig works, but when I type startx to get to desktop, it fails

sax2 --fullscreen
Doesn’t work(resolution issue, and X-server can’t load)

sax2 -r -m 0=vesa --fullscreen
Same as above

After all this failed, I rebooted and started in failsafe mode. To my amazement my resolution is flawless and almost all my hardware is detected and is functioning porperly (except my sound I think). Everything seems to be in order, I have my desired resolution and almost everything is functioning.

Which brings me to my question. What is failsafe mode, and could/should I just boot from there all the time? It seems to be the best functioning of the two SUSE options I have from my GRUB boot menu. What should I do?

Failsafe provides the same as the default, it’s the same system. All it does is add kernel arguments - If failsafe works, it’s OK to use it. Some feature may not work, eg; suspend

In this file: /boot/grub/menu.lst
Which is the menu file that shows up when you boot your computer.

Look at it and see the difference - In the default you may have vga=***
if you remove that and put in the failsafe part: x11failsafe vga=***

You edit the file with (be careful - make a copy)
kdesu kwrite /boot/grub.menu.lst
that assumes you are using kde. Gnome is: gnomesu gedit

You can actually try it without editing the file, and do it at the boot screen, it gives the option to edit kernel arguments

After installing the last updates kde4 will not start and the fonts have been changed.

Welcome to openSUSE forums.

Tagging on to someone’s 1 week old thread is not likely to get you the support you want. I recommend you start a new thread. Also advise what you tried, and what graphic hardware your PC has (ie ati ? nvidia ? intel ? and what graphic card model ? ). For example my sandbox PC has a nvidia FX5200 graphics. Ensure you specify what openSUSE version you have as well.