I have solved my problem. Deleting /etc/ati and reinstalling the ati driver did not help. although the /etc/ati directory got created, there was nothing in it. swapping hard disks, creating a clean install of Ubuntu, updating & installing the hardware driver, then copying amdpcsdb and amdpcsdb.default to the /etc/ati directory of the old hard drive, got something that would boot and work, but with that annoying AMD testing use only bug in the lower right hand corner.
uninstalling the hardware driver, copying the entire /etc/ati from the clean install then re-installing the hardware driver FINALLY got me a working system. -- fglrx fails at startup because of missing amdpcsdb.default + removal leaves bad settings in Xorg.conf https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/440233 You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs