graphics corruption/hardlock with Radeon Mobility 9600

[Pedro R]

hello

i've been having major problems with any version of Xorg above 7.2. I had openSUSE 10.3 running on my system for a year and a half when i decided to upgrade to 11.1. After upgrading, gdm hardlocks and show corrupted graphics. So i decided to try various distributions: ZenWalk, gentoo, fedora, debian lenny, etc. The same happens in all of them: at first boot into gdm, it locks up completely - ctrl + alt + del, ctrl + fX, even quickly pressing and depressing the power button doesn't work.

Only openSUSE 10.3 (xorg 7.2) and Debian etch (7.1) work flawlessly. I've pinned down this problem to either a xorg, xorg-radeon or gdm bug, since Windows runs fine with 3D acceleration.

Any ideas? I'm desperate. Never thought Windows would run on a machine where Linux doesn't!

thanks for the time