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Screen tearing in installer

Ask for help with issues regarding the Installations of the Debian O/S.
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hellvetica
Posts: 31
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Screen tearing in installer

#1 Post by hellvetica »

I've been trying to instal jessie for ages now and I can't get past the language selection screen beacuse my display is unreadable. I have insane amounts of diagonal screen tearing as soon as i select install or graphical install in the boot menu.
I have integrated Intel 4600 HD graphics and a discrete AMD radeon 8750M HD gpu.
I tried different .iso downloads that include different non-free firmware because i thought my amd card drivers were the problem but eventually i tried turning hybrid graphics off in the bios but to no avail. I also tried adding nomodeset to the commands and changing the resolution via the vga parameter but no success.
I realised that this problem only occours with jessie derived debian systems as i remember installing a wheezy based debian os with no problem.
The installation isn't frozen or anything i can still see the selection box moving but everyting is unreadable because of the tearing.

I couldn't find any kind of fix online and i haven't seen anyone with a similar problem on jessie so if you can help me i would be very grateful.

hellvetica
Posts: 31
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Re: Screen tearing in installer

#2 Post by hellvetica »

here's what the screen looks lke
http://imgur.com/a/SSC05

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debiman
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Re: Screen tearing in installer

#3 Post by debiman »

that's not tearing, but something far more serious.
what hardware are you trying to install to?

hellvetica
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Re: Screen tearing in installer

#4 Post by hellvetica »

debiman wrote:that's not tearing, but something far more serious.
what hardware are you trying to install to?
I have an HP Probook 450 G1 with an i5-4200M and 8gb ram.
Not that it should matter but i have WIN 10 installed on it already (which works fine) and i made a partition to install debian.
I'm booting from an SD card. I tried booting from a normal USB but it made no difference.

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pylkko
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Re: Screen tearing in installer

#5 Post by pylkko »

You didn't really offer any explanation for why you feel that you need the graphical installer. Could you elaborate on that? The non-graphical one is identical after all

hellvetica
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Re: Screen tearing in installer

#6 Post by hellvetica »

pylkko wrote:You didn't really offer any explanation for why you feel that you need the graphical installer. Could you elaborate on that? The non-graphical one is identical after all
The image i provided is of the non graphical installer. It doesn't work.
Besides, i tried running install via speach synthesis and the terminal text that appeared as it loaded was distorted as well. (I don't know how the whole speach synthesis thing works i just thought i'd try it)

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bw123
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Re: Screen tearing in installer

#7 Post by bw123 »

If you use ctrl-alt-f1, f2, f3 and so on you can maybe get some more info. I think the installer uses vga=788 and some fbdev or other obscure graphics commands. There might be an error message or something useful on one of those ttys?

The RC2 stretch installer has a lot more help and more options, maybe you should try it?
https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/

p.s. I never tried the speech synthesis option so maybe if you have time let me know what you think if you try it?
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hellvetica
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Re: Screen tearing in installer

#8 Post by hellvetica »

Well i tried the ctl+alt+f1 f2 etc. But i got just what i expected. It changed to a classic black screen with text on it but the display was still distorted so it wasn't of much help.
http://imgur.com/RllQ4Y4
I'll try the RC stretch installer and report back.

p.s. the speech synthesis never really worked for me. It probably threw some error but i couldn't read it because of the distortion

hellvetica
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Re: Screen tearing in installer

#9 Post by hellvetica »

bw123 wrote: The RC2 stretch installer has a lot more help and more options, maybe you should try it?
https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/
I got exactly the same result.

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bw123
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Re: Screen tearing in installer

#10 Post by bw123 »

i read a couple of threads about bios disabling/enabling either/or on those discreet graphics systems, hope you figure it out.
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hellvetica
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Re: Screen tearing in installer

#11 Post by hellvetica »

bw123 wrote:i read a couple of threads about bios disabling/enabling either/or on those discreet graphics systems, hope you figure it out.
I tried disabling it but it didn't help. Besides, the .iso with non-free firmware has the drivers for my GPU so it should work... but it doesn't. I'm drawing a blank.

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eor2004
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Re: Screen tearing in installer

#12 Post by eor2004 »

@ OP: Hi, maybe you should check the health of your ram memory, that type of screen corruption means problems with your video card hardware, problems with your drivers or a faulty ram memory, check your memory first to rule that out.

P.S. Also check the gold pins of your ram memory, clean them if they're dirty and test your memory again!
Debian 12 Gnome on a MSI H61M-P25 (B3) PC & on a Dell Latitude E6410 & HP EliteBook 8540p Laptops.
LMDE 6 on a Panasonic ToughBook CF-C1 Laptop.
Bodhi Linux 7 on a HP Compaq DC5750 Small Form Factor PC.
Windows 11 on a Intel DH55TC PC.

hellvetica
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Re: Screen tearing in installer

#13 Post by hellvetica »

eor2004 wrote:@ OP: Hi, maybe you should check the health of your ram memory, that type of screen corruption means problems with your video card hardware, problems with your drivers or a faulty ram memory, check your memory first to rule that out.
Hi,
I ran the windows memory diagnostic and it found no errors. My ram is fine.

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stevepusser
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Re: Screen tearing in installer

#14 Post by stevepusser »

I would also try some other distros' live images, just to see if they also have the same issue. It will cost nothing except time and bandwidth. If they don't suffer the same timing problem, perhaps whatever they did to get it working there can be applied to Debian.
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hellvetica
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Re: Screen tearing in installer

#15 Post by hellvetica »

stevepusser wrote:I would also try some other distros' live images, just to see if they also have the same issue. If they don't, perhaps whatever they did to get it working there can be applied to Debian.
Out of curiosity I tried the debian derived Parrot OS 3.5 that uses jessie. The installer had the same issue but the live boot worked fine.
I also tried the older version of Kali Linux that uses wheezy. The installer worked fine as well as the live boot.

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debiman
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Re: Screen tearing in installer

#16 Post by debiman »

hellvetica wrote:
debiman wrote:that's not tearing, but something far more serious.
what hardware are you trying to install to?
I have an HP Probook 450 G1 with an i5-4200M and 8gb ram.
seems to be some sort of switchable graphics with an amd gpu (and the intel chip i suppose).
my next try would be to boot the installer with a 'nomodeset' option.
something like this:
https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php ... st13028883
basically you have to get to the linux boot command line and edit it, before you even boot the installer.

or is it a live system?

hellvetica
Posts: 31
Joined: 2017-03-12 16:35

Re: Screen tearing in installer

#17 Post by hellvetica »

debiman wrote:
hellvetica wrote:
debiman wrote:that's not tearing, but something far more serious.
what hardware are you trying to install to?
I have an HP Probook 450 G1 with an i5-4200M and 8gb ram.
seems to be some sort of switchable graphics with an amd gpu (and the intel chip i suppose).
my next try would be to boot the installer with a 'nomodeset' option.
something like this:
https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php ... st13028883
basically you have to get to the linux boot command line and edit it, before you even boot the installer.

or is it a live system?
Nomodeset is one of the first things that i tried. I never heard of those acpi settings though. I'll try that as soon as i can.
Also, i tried turning off hybrid graphics in the BIOS already and it made no difference.

hellvetica
Posts: 31
Joined: 2017-03-12 16:35

Re: Screen tearing in installer

#18 Post by hellvetica »

hellvetica wrote:
debiman wrote: seems to be some sort of switchable graphics with an amd gpu (and the intel chip i suppose).
my next try would be to boot the installer with a 'nomodeset' option.
something like this:
https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php ... st13028883
basically you have to get to the linux boot command line and edit it, before you even boot the installer.

or is it a live system?
Nomodeset is one of the first things that i tried. I never heard of those acpi settings though. I'll try that as soon as i can.
Also, i tried turning off hybrid graphics in the BIOS already and it made no difference.
Where would i exactly insert the acpi arguments? I tried inserting them before and after the "quiet" arg. but it made no difference.

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stevepusser
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Re: Screen tearing in installer

#19 Post by stevepusser »

Those two video commands in the Ubuntu forum thread that set the resolution to 1280x1024 and the refresh to 60 look promising, since your "tearing" looks like the refresh rate is incorrect. I think you are meant to try one or the other.

Your next issue could be getting the wifi to work, judging by what the web searches turn up, since it doesn't look like that device is supported in the kernel.

This might help: https://github.com/tobiasBora/MT7630E_3.16
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debiman
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Re: Screen tearing in installer

#20 Post by debiman »

you haven't even answered yet what graphics hardware you really have in there.
afaiu, these laptops always come in many different flavors, even under the same model number... the switchable amd/intel graphics is something that is likely to cause problems, so we (you!) need to know for sure.
also from now on whenever you try something someone suggested you have to document it fully, show exactly what you did and where you failed and also remember to UNDO what didn't work.

PS:
it would be good to get output from

Code: Select all

lspci -k
but i understand you can't even get that far.
or can you boot into a live session? debian or sth else?

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