I've got troubles getting the i915 drivers to work correctly on my laptop (HP Pavilion DM4 2101ea).

Specifically, the laptop screen goes black and stays black after the splash graphic when booting both from USB key and from harddrive.

To get anything on to the display after the splash screen I have to boot either with

• acpi=off


• nomodeset


• i915.modeset=0

I'd rather not turn ACPI off because I like my fans spinning and nomodeset is a bit overkill, so for now I'm booting with i915.modeset=0.

Unfortunately, this turns off KMS and my current maximum resolution on the laptop screen is fixed to 1024x768 instead of its real capability.

When not setting any of the above boot flags and I plug in an external monitor, the external monitor works fine. When booting with the flags, the external monitor works fine too, but can only do 1024x768 and can't do anything else than mirroring the laptop display.

I did upgrade the i915 drivers from 2.17 that ship with Precise to 2.19 which are the most recent ones but without luck of getting anything to display.

Here's my lspci output:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 2nd Generation Core Processor Family DRAM Controller (rev 09)

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 09)

00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family MEI Controller #1 (rev 04)

00:1a.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller #2 (rev 05)

00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 05)

00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev b5)

00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 3 (rev b5)

00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 5 (rev b5)

00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller #1 (rev 05)

00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation HM65 Express Chipset Family LPC Controller (rev 05)

00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family 6 port SATA AHCI Controller (rev 05)

00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family SMBus Controller (rev 05)

01:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller (rev 01)

02:00.0 Unassigned class [ff00]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTS5116 PCI Express Card Reader (rev 01)

08:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR8151 v2.0 Gigabit Ethernet (rev c0)

Here's lshw -C video

  *-display UNCLAIMED     

       description: VGA compatible controller

       product: 2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics Controller

       vendor: Intel Corporation

       physical id: 2

       bus info: pci@0000:00:02.0

       version: 09

       width: 64 bits

       clock: 33MHz

       capabilities: msi pm vga_controller bus_master cap_list

       configuration: latency=0

       resources: memory:c0000000-c03fffff memory:b0000000-bfffffff ioport:4000(size=64)

Both outputs are generated after booting with i915.modeset=0.

Here's a complete Xorg.log file from a boot into a black screen: https://gist.github.com/479ce06454e47d6123e1

The graphics card is a Intel HD 3000 integrated GPU.

I've never had problems with Intel hardware on Ubuntu before so this is very surprising.

If you could

• provide a method to make i915 work,


• suggest alternative drivers


• a way to boot with i915.modeset=0 but higher resolutions and KMS on


• or explain what is happening and how to fix it

I'll give you an answer badge. :)

Thanks