GMA X3100. Sometimes works, sometimes doesnt(Solved)

[jotokun]

I have a Compaq Presario C770US with a GMA X3100 in it running Snow Leopard 10.6.4. I've ran leopard on it before with no issues, but Snow leopard (tried 10.6.0, 10.6.3 and 10.6.4) has a problem where after the apple logo, when it should be logging in it'll show me a gray screen. I can still interact with the computer, if I push the power button and press enter, it'll shut off and if I move the cursor in the direction of the upper right, the screen will shut off(which I have it set to do). The gray screen shows up on an external monitor if I plug one in as well.

 

Whats weird is, sometimes it boots up fine, and works perfectly. But the next time I boot it'll fail. Sometimes I can get it to work by rebooting without an external monitor attached if there was one, or with one attached if there wasnt. I can also get in if I boot in safe mode, change any setting under Display in System Preferences and then reboot.

 

The machine runs in 32-bit mode, with a vanilla kernel and mostly vanilla kexts(only audio, trackpad and battery arent vanilla). The only things not working on it are wifi and sleep, neither of which I really care about.

 

Any ideas?

 

EDIT: I figured out a way to make it consistently work. If I boot with the -v flag, it works every time. I have no clue why, since to my understanding that just makes it display messages that would normally be hidden in the name of appearance, but it does appear to work since I've rebooted about 8 times with both an external monitor attached and not attached just fine.