Boot issue (Probably 8800GTS related)

[Dallas]

Re: Boot issue (Probably 8800GTS related)

Hmm.
If the numbering is any indication (I have no idea what the numbers mean), that should be about where your graphics drivers are initialized... (Looking at dmesg here, fglrx gets initialized at 37.600429 (at least this boot)).

Granted they are different for everyone, when I boot into recovery mode, Nvidia doesn't get mentioned until past 35 at least.

[dibl]

Re: Boot issue (Probably 8800GTS related)

There's a video log file at /var/log/Xorg.0.log that might have some useful output.

[Dallas]

Re: Boot issue (Probably 8800GTS related)

There's a video log file at /var/log/Xorg.0.log that might have some useful output.

I've looked there, and everything seems in order actually. Right now I have switched the driver to Vesa and a 640X480 P&P monitor and shall see if it boots like that.

EDIT: After I switched it to a generic setup, the monitor goes into a powersave mode and shuts off. I'm really lost here now.

[dibl]

Re: Boot issue (Probably 8800GTS related)

Have you tried the "nv" driver? I wouldn't assume it would drive that 8800 very well, but you don't know for sure until you try.

sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

On the first screen say "NO" to autodetect, and on the second one pick the nv driver. It might be better than VESA. It sounds like the "hibernate/sleep" control is kind of touchy (and apparently different than older cards) -- that's what it putting your monitor into sleep mode.

[Dallas]

Re: Boot issue (Probably 8800GTS related)

Have you tried the "nv" driver? I wouldn't assume it would drive that 8800 very well, but you don't know for sure until you try.

sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

On the first screen say "NO" to autodetect, and on the second one pick the nv driver. It might be better than VESA. It sounds like the "hibernate/sleep" control is kind of touchy (and apparently different than older cards) -- that's what it putting your monitor into sleep mode.

The NV driver didn't work, still a blank black screen. I'm not going to put that much more time into this tonight, and if I can't get it to work due to the card, I'll delete the partition, fix the bootloader for windows. Then I'll just run it via VMware.

[dibl]

Re: Boot issue (Probably 8800GTS related)

Yeah, that's kind of a bummer. I'd spend a little time exploring the boot options related to power management. (acpi, lapic, etc.). It might be some combination of turning them on or off that is telling your card to put the monitor to sleep immediately upon booting. :P

[SheeEttin]

Re: Boot issue (Probably 8800GTS related)

Yep.
If you're willing to continue playing with Linux, the next thing to do would be to stick "acpi=off" in your kernel line in Grub and see if that changes anything.

By the way, what's your motherboard's brand and model? I think a search to see if any known issues show up would be a good idea.

[Dallas]

Re: Boot issue (Probably 8800GTS related)

By the way, what's your motherboard's brand and model? I think a search to see if any known issues show up would be a good idea.

Asus A8N-E

[Uber Nooblett]

Re: Boot issue (Probably 8800GTS related)

I think, to be honest, if you start again (format your disk and install from cd again) you will be fine. When you first load up from disk on a n 8800, the screen stays blank for minutes on end while the CD loads up. At times it looks as if the PC is doing nothing, but it is.

Then, when it is installed, load into Kubuntu with standard install. Once again, on an 8800, as I mentioned before, this will take some waiting at an inactive screen.

when you are there, download the driver from NVidia to your home folder and, to be on the safe side, reboot. When you get to the logon prompt hit the button to the left of the logon and select a text/console log on. then type:

telinit 3

if it comes back to logon prompt, exit to command line again.
Navigate to your home folder (you should already be there as default) then type:

su

and enter your password
Then:

sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-100.14.19-pkg2.run

Then follow the install instructions hitting all the 'ok's

I honestly think you are chasing a non-existent issue here and making things worse. Its a mistake I very nearly made myself, rebooting the machine over and over thinking it had stalled when it was just taking its pretty time loading. It is an 8800 series 'issue' but not really an issue once you realize its there.. Start again afresh and if my method does not work on a fresh install I will eat one of my many hats.

[gigabz666]

Re: Boot issue (Probably 8800GTS related)

Hello, I just installed Kubuntu on my machine (Dual Booting) and during the live CD install, it would just hang. My monitor would just go into power saving mode and thus, the computer hanged. I then went and edited the video via F4 and was able to finally get Kubuntu installed. This is where my problems got a little hairy.

I can never boot up normally, all I get is a blank screen without a blinking "_". I can't Alt + F1-6 to bring it to command line. The monitor will just shutoff and I have to reset my machine. I did some browsing and noticed there was a common problem with the 8800GTS and tried to apply some fixes here from the forum.

First and for most, I have to boot up using the recovery option, NOTHING else works. I set the graphics to VESA and was finally able to start the x server to get into the gui. I only did this to try and install the new drivers from nvidia. This didn't go over to well so I then tried to install the ENVY driver. I was successful doing this, and restarted believing that I had beatin this bug. When it tried to boot normally, it just hangs at a blank screen but the monitor doesn't go into powersaving mode anymore. But I still can't figure out what is going on. With this notion, I deleted the quite option from the grub boot option and it still doesn't do anything. It mentions "kernel alive" and goes blank.

Now, I can boot using the recovery option, and as soon as I get the #, I type startx and I see the Nvidia Splash, KDE kicks in and everything runs flawlessly. Only issue is I'm running as root on everything. I'm really stuck at a loss here and don't know where to turn to figure this out.

Thanks for any help that you can provide.

Here is my xorg.conf ig that helps

I don't think that it is any comfort but it is for me. I have the exact same problem as you, everything you describe is exactly what happens for me. I'm running Dual NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX GPU's. It's a bit late at the moment but I'll try and give those things a go and see what I come up with.

[gigabz666]

Re: Boot issue (Probably 8800GTS related)

I think, to be honest, if you start again (format your disk and install from cd again) you will be fine. When you first load up from disk on a n 8800, the screen stays blank for minutes on end while the CD loads up. At times it looks as if the PC is doing nothing, but it is.

Then, when it is installed, load into Kubuntu with standard install. Once again, on an 8800, as I mentioned before, this will take some waiting at an inactive screen.

when you are there, download the driver from NVidia to your home folder and, to be on the safe side, reboot. When you get to the logon prompt hit the button to the left of the logon and select a text/console log on. then type:

telinit 3

if it comes back to logon prompt, exit to command line again.
Navigate to your home folder (you should already be there as default) then type:

su

and enter your password
Then:

sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-100.14.19-pkg2.run

Then follow the install instructions hitting all the 'ok's

I honestly think you are chasing a non-existent issue here and making things worse. Its a mistake I very nearly made myself, rebooting the machine over and over thinking it had stalled when it was just taking its pretty time loading. It is an 8800 series 'issue' but not really an issue once you realize its there.. Start again afresh and if my method does not work on a fresh install I will eat one of my many hats.

Is half an hour a long enough time to wait? The Desktop CD seems to be useless. Only the alternate CD works. Once that was installed I tried to boot up normally, however I get the same situation (I waited an hour this time). Blank screen, no progress bar or logo.

Having already installed the latest drivers (100.14.19) I booted up into the recovery console to get to the CLI. Typed in.

telinit 3

Got a brief glimpse of the login screen before the screen went blank and the monitor decided to switch itself off. So I used Ctrl-Alt-F1 to get back to command prompt and proceeded with the driver installation. Everything seemed fine, rebooted and exact same as before (all three occasions when first booting the monitor stays on during the blank screen).

Pretty frustrating this. I have a laptop with an ATI card and considering how bad those drivers are supposed to be, I've never had trouble like this.

I hope the original author has had better luck than me.