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I just installed 12.04, and my entire screen is being displayed entirely on the top half of my screen. The bottom half is always black or some technical garbage from the boot up. To interact with the bottom half of the screen I have to move the mouse over the screen to pull part of the bottom half of the screen on top and vice-versa. Does anyone know how to fix this? Also my computer told me, at startup, to go to here: http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/b43#devicefirmware. I'm on a Dell Mini Inspiron1010, it's a fairly standard setup for a 1010(as far as I know). I don't know what model the card graphics card is though.

link1275
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3 Answers3

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Looks as if you have the gma500.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HardwareSupportComponentsVideoCardsPoulsbo#Live_.28Desktop.29_CD

The problem with 12.04 is that the default kernel included on the desktop CD (all variants) is 3.3.2. This kernel works, but requires some custom boot parameters. Without these parameters you will either get a black screen or distortion.

Switch to a console - Ctrl-Alt-F1 Restart X with 'sudo service lightdm restart'

That should bring you back to a functional graphical desktop, so that you can proceed testing or installing.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HardwareSupportComponentsVideoCardsPoulsbo#Post_installation

Community
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Panther
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Not sure it's exactly the same issue, but I managed to fix a similar problem with:

$ xrandr --output eDP-1 --mode 1366x768

(To discover the right name to put under --output, just type xrandr -- the name is in the second line).

Isolated Ostrich
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Something similar happened to me while using screen (the window manager). For some unknown reason the bottom half the screen window became empty and unreachable.

What fixed it for me is calling the screen fit command: ctrl+a followed by ctrl+F

mgershen
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