Fix for video problem on the Dell Latitude C600/C500

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If you have problem with Dell Latitude C600/C500 video follow this procedure.This is a ATI Rage 128 Mobility graphics card. The problem is not with the drivers, bit with X configuration.

1) Start with the clean install of ubuntu. This will give you 800×600 screen resolution.

2) Download the xorgconf.txt to you desktop. This is at the bottom of the message under Attached Files

3) Start Terminal (Applications/Accessories/Terminal)

4) Enter the command cd /etc/X11/ (This is case sensitive as in capital X and has a space between the cd and /etc/X11 To paste in the Terminal use Shift+Ctrl+V)

cd /etc/X11/

5) Enter command sudo gedit xorg.conf

sudo gedit xorg.conf

6) Enter your root/Admin password. (The text editor will open the problem file.)

7) Click the Open button.

8) Open the xorgconf.txt file that was saved to the desktop.

9) Delete all the contents of xorg.conf (Problem file)

10) Copy all contents from xorgconf.txt (Working file)

11) Paste all contents to xorg.conf (New Working file)

12) Save xorg.conf

14) Reboot the laptop.

When the laptop restarts, it will be in the 1024×768 screen resolution.

Credit goes here

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36 Responses

  1. Tynen says:

    Thank you very much! I’ve been trying to install ubuntu on my c800 for a long time. It has the rage video card in it. Hopefully this will fix my problem 🙂

  2. Moe Pitman says:

    Thanks! This worked perfectly on my C600.

  3. ItsYouAgain says:

    I tried so many things and so many different distributions (xorg or the sound didnt worked properly) but now everything is working perfectly (xubuntu ftw ;D) thank you 😀

  4. Ahtasham Rizvi says:

    Thankssssssssss loooaaaadssssssss….. I went thru various webs… did lots of things… tried to modify the xorg.conf several times but failed until i came across your post… you explained it brilliantly … thanks loadsssssss… may God bless you….

    (My machine: Dell Latitude C600, ATI 128 Mobility 8MB VGA card, Xubuntu 8.10)

  5. Franck says:

    thank you very much for the help.
    I just have a little remaining problem : the conf file works perfectly with us keyborads but I can use it for my french keyboard … (I tried to change the “us” into “fr”, which didn’t work .

    Could you help me please ?
    Thank you! 🙂

  6. Milhouse says:

    You rock!!

  7. Tomislav says:

    This is solved my problem with resolution on Dell C600, thanks, great job.

  8. Christoph says:

    in terminal “sudo displayconfig-gtk”

    click on model

    choose dell on the left

    1024×768 laptop display panel on the right

    click OK

    note: you may have to restart or log out/in to take effect but it worked for me perfectly. This is a great alternative for those not comfortable editing the xorg.conf file

  9. marc says:

    Hi, it? great even for as newbey in Ubuntu it was fixed in minutes!

    Biggggggggggg thanks

    Marc

  10. Jylppy says:

    Thanks a lot! This worked perfectly.

  11. Uchenna says:

    Thanks dude. xrandr wasn’t changing my display fortunes, but using the file linked to above did the trick right away.

    I did it all even more simply from my terminal window in 4 steps. Explanations for each command is in parentheses, just type (or copy & paste) the commands that follow.

    STEP 1 (switches working directory to X11:)

    cd /etc/X11

    STEP 2 (downloads the xorgconf.txt into X11 dir:)

    sudo wget http://www.ubuntugeek.com/images/xorgconf.txt

    STEP 3 (creates xorg.conf file with contents of xorgconf.txt:)

    sudo cp xorgconf.txt xorg.conf

    STEP 4 (deletes the downloaded xorgconf.txt file:)

    sudo rm xorgconf.txt

    NB: Step 4 may well be optional, I just decided to get rid of the downloaded file.

  12. Alamgir Kahn says:

    DUDE!!!!!!

    THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!

  13. GC says:

    Thanks soooooo much! Fonts were big when running Ubuntu 8.1, 9.04, and 9.10. Tried everything including Ubuntu’s help. Then realized that it wasn’t the font that was big, it was the resolution that was low ( 800×600 ). Ubuntu did not detect the video card ( ATI Rage Mobility ) and/or monitor ( LCD )of my Dell C600 correctly. Then there was no xorg.conf to modify and had no idea how or where to “turn on ” 1024×768 resolution, refresh rates, video bus number, etc. Your xorgconf.txt contained everything and fixed my big font problem. Thanks again.

  14. bzbElder says:

    Perfect! Thank You!!!

  15. Tom says:

    Just installed 9.10 on my Latitude 600, but there’s no /etc/X11/xorg.conf so now what?

    No matter what resolution I choose (640×480, 800×600, or the default 1024×768) I see the horizontal wrapping of the image.

    Did a ‘find / -name xorg.conf’ and it’s nowhere to be found???

    Thanks

  16. martin says:

    Perfect – did the job after a fruitless few hours hacking around. Many thanks indeed.

    PS to Tom above – 9.10 doesn’t give you xorg.conf as default but it should work fine if you just copy the .txt file as xorg.conf into etc/X11.

  17. Tom says:

    Tried putting it in /etc/X11 but still no luck after reboot. Checked file name spelling very carefully. Created a copy in all the directories (that exist) mentioned in the xorg.conf man page. Still no luck.

    Do I need to install an older version of Ubuntu? Would the netbook remix help, or is it pretty much the same?

  18. martin says:

    works fine on xubuntu 9.10 for me, on an old c600. So not sure why you are running into difficulties. But have a look at the “credit” thread referenced in the original post – various possibilities there maybe.

  19. Jens says:

    It did not work for me either (kubuntu 9.10) and ended up having to reinstall 9.10 again to get back to a working resolution. I have a 1 Ghz 512meg c600. I’ll work in the lower resolution until I figure out how to get this working, It was fine under 8.10.

  20. Chris Martin says:

    This also works in 9.10 for me. The only difference is that it was still in 800×600 after I restarted. I had to go into preferences>display to set the resolution to 1024×768.

  21. Georges MOMO says:

    hi
    i have ubuntu 9.10 but want i install him on my c600,at boot i have image with some horizontal touble.

  22. Tom says:

    Best I can tell something’s changed since older releases. I too have the horizontal “sync” problem as well as the resolution issue. Unfortunately not a lot of free time to mess with it at this time…

  23. MrMike says:

    Thanks…this worked great for an old Dell C600 that now has new use. I was getting tired of “moving the screen around” to read a web page.

  24. sm says:

    Thanks a bunch. It also works on Dell Inspiron 8000

  25. ds says:

    ace, the screen wasn’t very practical at 800×600. Your easy to follow solution has breathed new life into this old laptop.

  26. Jylppy says:

    Thanks, this worked for me!

  27. ken says:

    solved my problem using the
    sudo wget http://www.ubuntugeek.com/images/xorgconf.txt string

    thanks..

    Ken

  28. RT says:

    For anyone who sees this and wonders if it will still work with 10.04 LTS Lucid Lynx – the answer is yes I just did it.

    BIG thanks to all who contributed to this.

  29. Jim says:

    Works in xubuntu 10.04 also. Thanks.

  30. hebz0rl says:

    im trying to use this in fedora 13 but it doesnt work any suggestions?

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