Strange color problems...

[phonemonkey]

I am having a strange problem. I am running a 400mhz G4 sawtooth with Tiger on one partition and linux on the other. Everything was working last time I shut down, but when I booted up after work I only appear to be getting white and grey colors, like my monitor is monochrome. Everything is quite distorted and plain text cannot be read. Thinking it may be ram because I added some recently, I one by one rebooted with one less stick until I had eliminated all of them. I couldn't bypass my video card because I don't have another but it is the stock ati that came in the computer. So I then booted into my ubuntu partition and had no display problems whatsoever. I am assuming that it is something software related but cannot see enought to change resolution, etc. Also if anyone knows why this would happen spontaneously I would really appreciate it.
Phonemonkey

 

[varmit]

I am having a strange problem. I am running a 400mhz G4 sawtooth with Tiger on one partition and linux on the other. Everything was working last time I shut down, but when I booted up after work I only appear to be getting white and grey colors, like my monitor is monochrome. Everything is quite distorted and plain text cannot be read. Thinking it may be ram because I added some recently, I one by one rebooted with one less stick until I had eliminated all of them. I couldn't bypass my video card because I don't have another but it is the stock ati that came in the computer. So I then booted into my ubuntu partition and had no display problems whatsoever. I am assuming that it is something software related but cannot see enought to change resolution, etc. Also if anyone knows why this would happen spontaneously I would really appreciate it.
Phonemonkey

Did you zap your PRAM? The PRAM I believe holds the video settings.

 

[phonemonkey]

I did apple+option+p+r let it chime the 3 times and it changed the resolution until it got to the login screen. This it was all the same. I just went ahead and accessed the partition through my linux partition, backed up all the important info, and then reformatted. I tried to just reinstall Tiger instead of formatting and reinstalling, but Tiger informed me there were errors. Disk Warrior said the corruptions were too severe to repair, Repairing permissions told me that my TreeB was corrupt, so I just bit the bullet. I didn't worry too much about reformatting because I mainly use the Mac side for high end things and use the Linux for my net stuff and managing security around the home front.

 

[yenko]

I did apple+option+p+r let it chime the 3 times and it changed the resolution until it got to the login screen. This it was all the same. I just went ahead and accessed the partition through my linux partition, backed up all the important info, and then reformatted. I tried to just reinstall Tiger instead of formatting and reinstalling, but Tiger informed me there were errors. Disk Warrior said the corruptions were too severe to repair, Repairing permissions told me that my TreeB was corrupt, so I just bit the bullet. I didn't worry too much about reformatting because I mainly use the Mac side for high end things and use the Linux for my net stuff and managing security around the home front.

Next time run Disk Warrior before you install your Linux. Make sure afterwards that your OS X partition is Journaled. I've had several occurrences where Disk Warrior would leave the drive(s) "un-journaled".
Go into Disk Utility afterwards and just check the "Enable Journaling" icon after you select your OS X partition. If it's grayed out, look below and make sure it indicates that you drive is journaled. I know a few people who install software on their machines, especially software updates, before checking and making sure they don't have directory errors or incorrect permissions, and they wonder later on why they have problems.