Fedora 17 boot fail

[balbkubrox]

We have a PC running Fedora 17 XFCE and all seemed to be going well for a few weeks but my son, who is the main user, reported that it wouldn't boot and the screen was reporting "No Signal".

Taking a look for myself I find that we get past GRUB but after a matter of seconds the system fails. I see a message telling me the ramdisk is loading, then some random text scrolls along the top of the screen and some text flashes up but in an instant the screen dies and I don't have time to read what it says.

I have searched on the Web and a suggestion that the framebuffer fails seems probable to me. There was a suggestion that I should change the boot options to prevent kernel modules loading but the ones suggested seem not to apply to this distro. Among the boot options shown in the "advanced boot" list were "gfxpayload=keep" into which I have inserted resolution combinations I know ought to work [1920x1080x24 etc] to no avail.

As I say, it has worked for a while but failed this week. Also, the live CD from which I installed the distro similarly fails to boot [though it was fine before] unless I go into safe mode.

Any suggestions from the gurus here?

[Ram]

Sounds like it could be a dodgy graphics card, 'No Signal' is normally displayed on a monitor when it receives nothing from the PC.

[balbkubrox]

Thanks for the response.

Bearing in mind that the output from the graphics card is fine up to the GRUB screen and I can run the live CD in safe mode can it really be the [on board] graphics card?

[Ram]

What type and size of monitor are you using?

[balbkubrox]

Acer X223HQ 21.5 Inch Widescreen LCD Monitor
Resolution: 1920 x 1080
Interfaces: VGA
Aspect Ratio: 16:9

Mobo: Gigabyte M68SM-S2L
Processor: Athlon 64 X2 4800+
2GB RAM

Boot options per GRUB:

load_video
set gfxpayload=keep
insmod gzio
insmod part_msdos
insmod ext2
set root='hd2,msdos1'
if [ x$feature_platform_search_hint = xy ]; then
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root --hint-bios=hd2,msdos1 --hint-efi=hd2,msdos1 --hint-baremetal=ahci2,msdos1 --hint='hd2,msdos1' de6707e8-fa6e-4f47-9abd-0e739993b871
else
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root de6707e8-fa6e-4f47-9abd-0e739993b871
fi
echo 'Loading Linux 3.3.4-5.fc17.x86_64 ...'
linux /boot/vmlinuz-3.3.4-5.fc17.x86_64 root=UUID=de6707e8-fa6e-4f47-9abd-0e739993b871 ro rd.md=0 rd.lvm=0 rd.dm=0 SYSFONT=True KEYTABLE=uk rd.luks=0 LANG=en_US.UTF-8 rhgb quiet
echo 'Loading initial ramdisk ...'
initrd /boot/initramfs-3.3.4-5.fc17.x86_64.img

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I have Mint 13 Mate running fine on it at the mo off the recent LXF DVD [live].