Terrible display flickering after FC5 update today

[Neal Becker]

John Vasileff wrote:

> On 10/25/06, Johannes Erdfelt <johannes at erdfelt.com> wrote:
>> On Wed, Oct 25, 2006, Tom Horsley <tomhorsley at adelphia.net> wrote:
>> > On Wed, 25 Oct 2006 12:53:58 -0400
>> > Neal Becker <ndbecker2 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > > Neal Becker wrote:
>> > >
>> > > > After today's fc5 update, I now have a horrible random flickering
>> > > > on my
>> > > > display.  I only hope fc6 (when I can finally get bt to download
>> > > > it) will repair it.
>> > >
>> > > Went away after reboot.  This is probably just a different
>> > > manifestation of an (apparent) race condition with starting the X
>> > > server.
>> >
>> > Not sure what you mean by flickering, but with my radeon I have noticed
>> > (much more often on FC6 test than FC5) that it sometimes acts like the
>> > dpms monitor shut-down stuff gets triggered randomly every few seconds.
>> > It will go through a really bad time, then it will stop happening for a
>> > while. Video just keeps turning on and off. If I reboot enough, I'll
>> > eventually get to a state where it no longer does it (until the next
>> > time I reboot :-).
>>
>> What monitor do you use?
>>
>> I had a similar problem with my Dell 2000FP. Turned out to be a timing
>> problem between the ATI card and the monitor.
>>
>> I was able to hack my X driver to use a lower timing and almost
>> completely solve the problem (every blue moon it would flicker once).
>>
>> You can also check the archives for past discussions.
>>
>> JE
>>
> 
> I've had the same problem with FC5.  My solution - ctrl-alt-f1 to
> switch to a text console followed by alt-f7 to return to X clears it
> up.  The problem seems to happen on bootup, but weeks can pass without
> a problem (assuming no reboot) after using the above technique.
> 
> 
> John
> 

At random, perhaps 1/20 times X starts, it makes a beautiful, melting
screen.  Alt-Ctrl-Backspace fixes it.