Screen doesn't turn on after shut off by power management...

[capn233]

I am pretty new to Linux and have been trying out some different versions. Started with LM16 Cinnamon, then Mate, and then gave KDE a shot. Downloaded both the 64 and 32 bit versions of LM16 KDE and ran them from a live usb.

Hardware is pretty old, it is a Compaq V2000z laptop and it has a Turion 64 ML32, and a Radeon Xpress 200M (RS480M) for integrated graphics. 2GB shared RAM.

In any event, I was pleasantly surprised that KDE seemed to have nice visual effects which didn't seem to tax the CPU too much. However there seems to be a problem whenever power management shuts off the display. When I hit a button or the touchpad to "wake" it, the screen doesn't turn back on. This happened in both the 32 and 64bit versions of Mint 16 KDE. Most of the time I had to power off the computer with the power button and restart, although one time I managed to get Ctl-Alt-Backspace to reload it (at least I think that was what did it... and I might have had the lock on idle disabled).

This does not seem to be related to locking the screen, logging on, or logging off. It seems to be related to turning off the display in power management. Also, it seems that the screen will turn back on correctly when coming out of sleep.

I had seen some old threads where there may have been some bugs with power management and the radeon driver, but none that seemed to have a solution clearly elucidated.

Has anyone had a similar problem, and know a solution? Is this something that might be fixed with an update to KDE?

edit: should have put this in here:

Graphics: Card: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] RS480M [Mobility Radeon Xpress 200]
X.Org: 1.14.3 drivers: ati,radeon (unloaded: fbdev,vesa) Resolution: 1280x768@60.0hz
GLX Renderer: Gallium 0.4 on ATI RS480 GLX Version: 2.1 Mesa 9.2.1

[atarmax]

I installed Mint 16 Xfce on two days ago and after Monitor settings are set so that display will go sleep mode after 10 minutes and Switch off display is set to activate after 15 minutes - if I try to wake up monitor after 20 minutes, nothing happens. I can't continue without reboot. After I set both to state "never" - screensaver works as it is set (blank) and I can continue any time after break.
I'm not sure how this works if only sleep mode is activated. I'm not tested this yet but I can do it if you want and need this info?

Driver Manager shows that my laptop uses different driver that is recommended. I'm new user so ... I'm not sure should I try to change driver (is it possible to do just selecting the button?) or should I de-activate and activate these drivers another way?

My Laptop have NVIDIA GeForce Go 6100 (chip in motherboard). DriverMgr says: NVIDIA Corporation: C51[GeForce Go 6100]
Active driver: xserver-xorg-video-nouveau
Recommended driver: nvidia-304

If I should change active driver, why the "incorrect" driver is selected during installation? Or why it's not changed during installation? Could this problem caused from that driver?

One extra Q:
I had to install Mint without internet connection because you program didn't allowed it - my LAN port is broken but WLAN port works fine and your installation program didn't accept to use WLAN during installation with "linux-firmwaer-nonfree" driver that is only driver that works with my WLAN (Broadcom Corporation BCM4318). During I got the info how to install including driver, i got also information that you all know that problem (1-2 years already, it's still not updated - why? So many people use extra time including your "support team". Why?)

[atarmax]

Looks that Driver Manager can handle driver settings when button is selected to another driver. This didn't work with WLAN driver so I didn't know how this should work. Maybe Driver Manager found the driver from network and with WLAN driver problem, I hadn't connection to network so ...? Anyway - after the recommended driver button was selected and I applied changes - Manager works for a while and these changes activated after reboot.
After that I tested how Monitor settings works - fine, I be able to use all monitor settings. But ... there are still problems in Power Manager: after computer goes to sleep mode - it will never wake up. Light of the hard disk flashed randomly but nothing else happened. I had to reboot ...

When laptop lid was closed, Lock screen-method worked fine.
I didn't test suspend and standby modes so far. What are differences of sleep, suspend and standby modes?
Should Hibernate mode works? I read from somewhere that it don't work at all, is it true?