Linux Mint and Touch Screen Blank Screen

I have been trying to get my CNC running after an upgrade to Linux Mint.

I have an eGalax touch screen that worked fine on my old Ubuntu install.

With the new Mint OS if I let the computer boot as normal, it comes to a colored background with no icons or menu etc.
Right Mouse does work to open a terminal.

If I boot passing through recovery mode, it works OK, the menus are there and touch screen responds.
I have done my best to install the drivers but the docs are terrible and I am unsure if everything is correct.

I tried putting the drive in a desktop PC, and it boots up fine without recovery mode..

If anyone has any ideas, please let me know.

If I don't find a solution, I am probably going to put in a non touch screen monitor since I rarely use the touch screen anyhow.

Best Regards

Jon Schmidt

Are you sure that the touch-screen is the reason for the blank desktop?

Do you still get the blank desktop with the touchscreen unplugged?

No, I am not sure what the problem is.
I did find some threads about similar problems that seemed to be related to drivers.
Also the monitor web page for drivers and the supporting documents are quite confusing and complicated.

The driver that i was using with Ubuntu doesn't seem to be compatible with Mint.
Installing it returns something like "touch control not found".

www.eeti.com.tw/drivers_Linux.html

This is the driver I am trying to use now:

Kernel 2.6.24 Upward
and 3.x.x / 4.x.x USB / UART / PS2
X86 (32/64bits) eGTouch_v2.5.5814.L-x 2015/10/22


By 'unplug' I guess you mean unplug the USB connection, I will try that tonight.

Thanks for the sanity check.

I disconnected the mouse cable: no difference
I connected a plain monitor and rebooted: no difference.

It just shows the background no icons or menu.

I guess it must be some other hardware issue.

When I connect the drive to the PC in my home, it does show the icons and menu.

Thanks a again for the help, I was about to buy another monitor, that would have been a drag to fire up and not see the icons and menu.

Best Regards

Jon Schmidt

I found that if I create a new file or folder it is visible on the desktop.
But if I MB3 arrange them by type (or whatever it is) they disappear.

If I reboot in recovery mode, I can see them.

I copied and pasted about 20 files on desk top to fill the screen in recovery mode.
When I reboot without recovery mode they are not visible, but when I make more files and align them it does seem to place them on the edge of the screen.

So i guess there is a problem with the origin of the graphics and the scale. I can't see the left side of the screen by about a full width.

During the part of bootup that text is on the screen, it is aligned as expected.

Almost like it was configured for dual monitors, but it doesn't seem to be anywhere in the settings.

I searched everywhere I could for anything that could effect that but nothing worked.

The preferences for screen resolution don't recognize the monitor but I can try several resolution settings, none of them improve the problem.

I connected a wide aspect ration HP monitor, same result.

I have run out of ideas to try.

I will probably go back to my old drive.

schmidtmotorworks wrote: So i guess there is a problem with the origin of the graphics and the scale. I can't see the left side of the screen by about a full width.

You could try running xrandr from a terminal window (if you can get a terminal window that shows on screen).

I would suggest booting in recover mode and creating an Xorg.cong file that sets a specific resolution. Xorg.conf is an old-fasjioned way to do it, and there are meant to be newer ways (like xrandr) and it is probably worth trying those first.

However, there is a good chance you will need an xorg.conf to calibrate the touchscreen anyway.

I think I found the root of the problem, now I need to figure out how to fix it.

Running not in recovery mode I ran xrandr.
It seems to be using two displays,
I don't know where LVDS1 comes from or how to get rid of it, but I think that is the goal for now.

I copied the xorg.config from y previous drive bit it doesn't seem to be read or do anything.

You might be able to disable the LVDS in the BIOS.
In the "monitors" control panel I imagine it thinks there is an LCD display connected?

I moved the drive to my home PC and ran xrandr again.

It gives a different result. Only one display.

I wonder why that would be.

Interesting idea, I will try that now.