# Randomly getting black screens on bootup

## deutronium

The console randomly becomes black during startup.  I believe this is due to having both 

an Intel and AMD graphics card.

I've compiled the Intel device driver into the kernel, with modesetting.

But not the radeon driver to avoid conflicts with fglrx.

I've pasted my kernel config here http://bpaste.net/show/50551/

I've setup support for VGA switcheroo, but the device doesn't seem to be created in /sys.

Thanks in advance

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## audiodef

I'm not sure you can have more than one card enabled at a time. Have you tried turning one of them off in the BIOS?

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## deutronium

Sorry yeah, they can't be enabled both at once, it's called 'switchable graphics' apparently.

There aren't any BIOS settings unfourtunately.

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## Hu

Does it work if you have only one graphics driver?  The phrasing of your first post implies that you are attempting to use both the open Intel driver and the proprietary AMD driver.

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## deutronium

Even with fglrx blacklisted i still randomly get black screens at startup which is really frustrating!

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## deutronium

I've enabled a framebuffer, and found there seems to be a bug when the intel driver is loading which sometimes seems to make the display go blank.

Weirdly if you load i915, fglrx and X straight away the display then works.

#!/bin/bash

sudo insmod /lib/modules/3.4.9-gentoo/kernel/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/i915.ko

sudo modprobe fglrx

startxfce4

But I don't think this is an especially good solution.

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## Matias Jose Seco

Are you encountering the following dmesg alert?

```
[Firmware Bug]: ACPI: No _BQC method, cannot determine initial brightness
```

If so, your issue could be the same as described here

Moreover, if that's the case, there where proposed some workarounds

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