Wednesday, April 20, 2016

ATI graphics card installations issues- no monitor, no frontend

Summary:
I am trying to install the Radeon HD 5450 graphics card. When I do, regardless of what drivers are installed/uninstalled I get a blinking monitor- not a black screen or a splash screen, but literally no monitor is detected and so the frontend doesn't even start. I cant ctrl+shift+F1 to a terminal, I can't hold shift during boot to access BIOS. I have tried everything I can think of. Please help!




My system:
XPC shuttle
Ubuntu 12.04
graphics card (old) GeForce 6200
graphics card (new) Radeon HD 5450
I also have onboard graphics



Background:
I am trying to upgrade my graphics card from my old nVidia to a newer Radeon. I started by hoping everything would just work and shutting down the system and popping out the old card and sticking in the new one. No luck- the monitor is not detected. So in order to fidget, I have to reinstall the old card to access a terminal. For some reason I can't just use the VGA port for the onboard graphics with a card installed-If I do the monitor is still not detected. If I pull out the card and try to use the onboard graphics, things get weird and Ubuntu doesnt boot properly, although I can get to the BIOS. Also For some reason I can't get ssh to work properly with other computers on my network but i suspect that is a whole other problem. So I reinstall the old card, and remove the proprietary nVidia drivers I was using. Then I install fglrx for the Radeon card. repeat installation process- still no monitor detected. Put the old card back in and remove fglrx (assuming the drivers weren't compatible or something) and try to install with no additional drivers (I reinstalled xorg.conf from apt as well just to be safe). Still no monitor detected. This is a very frustrating problem because in order to fix anything I have to install/remove components. I have taken out and put in this card like 40 times. I would be tempted to assume this is an Ubuntu problem and just erase and install windows, but the fact that I get no monitor at all (and not just a black screen) suggests that a new operating system won't help since the card should be detected before Ubuntu boots (right?) I am on day three of trying to troubleshoot this problem and I need a fresh set of eyes. What should I do next? Will installing windows help? what about a fresh ubuntu installation? I will try anything at this point. All my files are already backed up, so I don't have anything to lose.

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