Hi Everyone,
I installed Deb 6.0.4 on an old Dell Inspiron 2650 laptop and everything seemed to go well, except... I'll try to describe a problem I'm experiencing, evidently with X: The windows are all blank. Even at the login screen, I can't see the "username,other" selection list -- just a blank rectangle for the login window. The Debian starry desktop background picture does show up however. When I wave the mousepointer over the login window, it selectively shows -some- of the contents, enough that I can see to select my username, type my password and log in.
Once logged in, it's more of the same in Gnome. I can see the starry desktop background picture, and I can see the menu bars, but I can't see the icons (Computer, Home, Trash) on
the desktop until I waive the mouse pointer over them. I also cannot see the Applications, Places, and System menus on the left side of the top menu bar. But I can see the network, date, sound and window selector widgets on the right side of the menu bar. When I click on any of the Applications, Places or System menus, I don't see anything drop down -- but if I pause the mouse over where I expect the menu to be, tool-tips do appear, suggesting that the menu is there.
I am able to ctrl+alt+f* into terminal windows and use them perfectly well. No problems at all here.
When I was booted off the CD to install Debian, I didn't have any trouble with the GUI environment. Now I'm trying to figure out what is wrong with this fresh install.
A little more info: I installed from a CD iso that I burned, and the laptop had a running network connection
(ethernet) when I installed Debian. Additional packages were downloaded from the Internet. Again, the installation process didn't seem to have any problems.
I'm somewhat of a Linux newbie (especially to Debian), but I can provide further information if anyone can suggest what commands to run and what output to provide. Also, because I'm having trouble describing my problem, I've also struggled to Google it and find existing information on the subject. If anyone has pointers, I would appreciate it.
Thanks very much!
Jim