Likely, the problem is with your resolution.  Flat panels have a native resolution. 
You must learn your laptop's native resolution and change the active screen section
of your XF86Config / xorg.conf file accordingly.  Here is a snippet of that section
for my laptop:

Section "Screen"
    Identifier	"Screen0"
    Device 	"ATIFireGL"
    Monitor	"FlatPanel"
    DefaultDepth 24
    Subsection "Display"
    	Depth		24
    	Modes		"1400x1050"   
    EndSubsection
EndSection


GL...



On Sun, 29 May 2005 21:50:03 -0700, Robert Rosenwald pushed these keyboard buttons:
==============================================================================
>I'm new to this ug and linux. Spent a lot of years with POSSI and still 
>run OS/2 on a couple of boxes but decided it was time to learn Linux. I 
>have a notebook - Sony 505TR - which uses a PCMCIA CD-ROM drive. I was 
>going to install Gentoo (sort of got that working on another box a few 
>months back) but had problems so I tried SuSE 8.1 which installed no 
>problem. The problem is that when I startup it goes through the boot 
>(all seems to load fine -- no errors showing -- but then it tries to go 
>into X and the screen goes black. So I tried Safe Settings from Lilo and 
>that gets me to a command prompt where I can login. All's fine to there. 
>When I try to use YAST2 (XConfigurator doesn't seem to be installed) to 
>reconfigure the video system it looks to me like it is autprobing and 
>again screen goes blank. so I believe there is a file ( possibly 
>XF86Config) that needs tweaking. But I'm unsure what to tweak and how to 
>tweak it. I think I can get Vi to work but when I go into the file 
>there's a big warning about DO NOT EDIT. I'm unsure if the admonition is 
>BS and even if it isn't what to change and how to change it. What I do 
>know is that this notebooks wants 1024 x 768 and 16 colors.
>
>I have seen one other poster discussing this machine and he mentions 
>that the Monitor section should have  HorizSync 31.5-48.5  VertRefresh 60.
>
>Hopefully someone out there can point me in the right direction. One of 
>these days this fall I'll start coming to user group meetings but I'm 
>travelling almost nonstop until Sept.
>
>
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-- 
my$.02
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