Black Screen While Starting X window

by on April 2, 2006 · 3 comments· Last updated July 30, 2007

My friend is new to Linux, everything was fine until he made some changes to X, which result into this problem. Now whenever he types command startx to start X he get a blank screen. Finally, he contacted me me via yahoo and asked me to get rid rid of this problem.

Step # 1: Reset blank X screen

First, get out of Blank screen by pressing combination of keys Ctrl+Alt+Backspace. If this fails, reboot system.

Step # 2: Reconfigure X server display

At shell, prompt type the following command to reconfigure X display.

If you are using Red Hat /Fedora / CentOS Linux type command:
# redhat-config-xfree86
If you are using Debian Linux type command:
# dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86
OR login as the root user and type command:
# XFree86 -configure

Step # 3: Test new setup

Type startx to test your new settings:
# startx
OR if you used XFree86 –configure command to reconfigure X, then test it with following command:
# XFree86 -xf86config /etc/X11/XF86Config.new

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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Ej dangat October 20, 2011 at 4:00 am

”At shell, prompt type the following command to reconfigure X display”
where is this shell located? i dont understand please reply

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2 oluwatudimu michael July 24, 2012 at 10:35 am

with all what that was written here will it solve the problem to the computer

Reply

3 Eric Berlin April 24, 2013 at 8:31 pm

A solution I found when upgrading Ubuntu broke my X server was to install xserver-xorg-video-all. For some reason, my fglrx driver quit working. My X server started and the monitor turned off (after some attempts to keep it from crashing at startup). After installing all the video drivers and rebooting, everything was all better.

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