Screen tearing on hp laptop

I have made a mistake in the past of assuming the specs on a users machine were the same as listed online. I am not knocking your helpfulness @Michel , just exercising caution that stems from my own mistakes.
A 32 bit OS should be able to run on a 64 bit machine, but the reverse is not true.

FWIW, I think @Michel is trying to point out that the machine is pretty low in specs - specially RAM. I recall a couple of older threads where posters were struggling to even get Z15 Lite 32 bit installed - the machines just barely met the minimum requirements but it turned out that more than that was needed just to get the installer to run successfully.

Hope this helps and sorry if I have misunderstood the issue.

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Thank you again for the help. The machine has been sitting unused for over 10 years but thought I would try to get it to be useful for my kid to check email and browse the web.

On the live session version 15.3 lite 32 but it still has screen tearing but on safe graphics mode in the live session is fine. Thoughts?

Installing it now. Will see if tearing persists after drivers download.

I strongly recommend you provide the info Michel requested so that we can troubleshoot better.

Ok I had to boot back into live session with safe graphics.

How about:

lshw -c graphics

@Aravisian Seems like he has the GeForce 7150M.
@Whitecliff sudo lshw -c memory also please.

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sudo lshw -c video please - sorry, this is because your graphics command didn't work.


Can you post a pic of Software Updater -> Settings -> Additional Drivers?

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Will the drivers or updates downloaded in live session be used in the normal OS? Sorry for the dumb question still learning. Thanks.

Not a dumb question. And, I didn’t realize you’re in Live, my bad. I would think they would. @Aravisian or @Michel - correct?

Your 7150M does not have any drivers listed for it.
Could you post the output of sudo lshw -c video?

Any updates or drivers that you can access in the Live "Try Zorin" would be the same ones available after installing Zorin OS.
If they are installed in the Live Boot, they will not carry over onto an installation of Zorin OS - you would need to install them.

Using the LiveCD or LiveUSB is a nice test run... But it is not ever going to be wholly accurate. Especially where Nvidia is concerned. Live Mode uses a different method of drivers and this is part of why something can seem to not work in Live, but work perfectly fine after installing Zorin OS or the other way around: Work fine in Live and not work once Zorin OS is installed.
LiveUSB must always be taken with a grain of salt - on any distro.

What you can test:

Boot up and use Nomodeset.

This page may be relatable to you, and it includes instructions with images on how to add the nomodeset parameter.

(by the way, "Safe Graphics" is just automated "nomodeset")

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Great thank you everyone for all the help. The problem with the normal zorin os is the screen is so distorted I can’t do anything. I will read the article and try it. Just fyi I have two other computers I just installed zorin on and liked it so much I am trying to get it going on an old laptop this is not my normal machine.

Articles are like long posts on the forum. They look so daunting until you actually read it all and see how it is quite easy, after-all. :wink: You will be fine.
Once nomodeset is added to grub on the permanent install, it will remain there, removing any necessity to re-engage it with every boot-up.

This is 100% correct

The laptop your trying to install Zorin on is a museum piece :wink:. Released in 2007 and a really old intergrate gpu card.

The **NVIDIA GeForce 7150M** is an integrated (shared memory) graphic card for laptops with AMD processors (socket S1), found in the nForce 610M chipset. The difference to 7000M is that 7150M offers HD-video decoding for MPEG2, H.264 in 720p. The performance is good compared with other onboard graphic cards but not really suited for games.

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