Nvidia drivers

[Peanuter]

Hiya... I have been messing about with various distros over the last couple of weeks, PClinuxOS, Fedora8, Linuxmint and Ubuntu/Kubuntu. The one I like the best is Kubuntu, I can not seem to take to the Gnome desktop. Anywho, with all distros I run into exactly the same problem with installing the Nvidia driver. I have a Dell c840 with the nvidia geforce4 440 go 32m card in it. What happens is everytime I install the nvidia driver, be it open-source or propriety, when I reboot i am left with a blank screen. I can log in and get the little tune, but the screen stays blank, it is like nothing is being rendered. I can use the system with the driver that is installed with the installation, I would just like to see if I can get a bit better performance for the graphics. I have tried many different ways of installing, after lots of searches in various forums and web sites, including manual/automatic and even envy installs, all to no avail. Does anyone know of a fix for this or should I just be happy with the way it is and maybe get a more up to date lappy. Any help and suggestions are appreciated.

Cheers

Edit: Also this laptop is my test one till I am comfortable with the environment, my main laptop is a Dell d810 which has a ATI radeon mobility x600 128mb card in it, if anyone purusing this has any insights on this card for when I move across to that laptop, which will be soon I hope, could you please share them with me. Thanks in advance..

[Snowhog]

Re: Nvidia drivers

Have you reviewed dibl's post on NVIDIA Driver?

[Peanuter]

Re: Nvidia drivers

Ah Nup.....but I have now, thanks, have taken down relevent notes and will have a go tnite when I finish work. I have a fresh install waiting for me after completely murdering it last night. Cheers for that.

[Snowhog]

Re: Nvidia drivers

You're welcome. My guess is, that unless you have a totally unusual Nvidia card, that dibl's guidance should get you going.

[Peanuter]

Re: Nvidia drivers {Semi-Solved}

Heya again, have tried the suggested method and ended up with the same, have a blank screen. I am going to stick with the drivers that are used with the install, which are the nv ones I believe, and leave at that. After all this is only my secondary lappy, I will be more intense in my resolving any issues with my main lappy when I install on that. Which I am going to do soon, I have had enough of winpoo.

Cheers for all suggestions

[dibl]

Re: Nvidia drivers

I believe that GF440 requires the 96xx series proprietary driver, not the newer 100-series one. Envy should detect that fact and install the correct one. Also the packaged driver "nvidia-glx" should work, but not "nvidia-glx-new".

[Peanuter]

Re: Nvidia drivers

Hi Dibl, I have it working, I think, I did the Envy load and ended up with the same result, a black screen, so I went into the xorg.conf and changed the glx to nv and had the screen back, this time I had the Nvidia control panel thingy, which I had not had previously. Also I went throught the bios and it states that the card has 64mb not 32mb memory. I was hoping to get a bit of 3d effects working but I don't think that is realistic on this card, as I said I am happy to have it as is, as this is my lappy for tooling around on. Hopefully the dell d810s' card will give me a bit more.

Cheers