NVidia 7600 problem

[kourkoutas]

I own a toshiba satellite p100, with an NVidia 7600 graphics card. When I installed kubuntu 8.10, I had the restricted drivers for my graphics card (from repositories nvidia-glx-177) enabled and everything worked fine. However, after performing a kernel update my system just refuses to start X. Specifically, when it tries to load KDM, the screen goes black, my numlock and capslock indicators start flashing and it freezes.
I tried failsafe mode, where I set it to fix the xorg.conf file, and my system booted normally, however without the NVIDIA drivers, which is quite crap.
Then, I tried nvidia-xconfig, and the problem repeated it self.
The last attempt to fix it was to remove the existing drivers from my system and install the driver from the nvidia website. The results where the same, (i.e. flashing numlock and capslock - laptop freezes).

Any ideas how to fix this?

Thanks

[dibl]

Re: NVidia 7600 problem

Any ideas how to fix this?

Yes. You need to install the Nvidia driver again. I recommend the procedure described here:

http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...2816#msg152816

[kourkoutas]

Re: NVidia 7600 problem

I tried that, but it didn't work. I even tried ubuntu but the problem persists. It's weird though, because It did work when I installed and loaded the new drivers, but after rebooting I had the same results.

[dibl]

Re: NVidia 7600 problem

I tried that, but it didn't work.

I need more details about "didn't work" -- which step of the process did not appear to work correctly, or generated errors?

[kourkoutas]

Re: NVidia 7600 problem

actually everything completed error-free... but when i rebooted it blanked out and my numlock and capslock started flashing and everything went non-responsive.

[dibl]

Re: NVidia 7600 problem

Hmmmmmm. So the installation process, via EnvyNG, appeared to all go correctly, including running "sudo nvidia-xconfig" at the end of it?

Instead of rebooting, you could simply, at your user "$" prompt, run "startx". I'd be interested in seeing whether that works, or whether errors are generated. I'm guessing it will work. But it may not hold together after a shutdown and restart.

[kourkoutas]

Re: NVidia 7600 problem

yep. no installation errors, xorg.conf is generated correctly with nvidia-xconfig. I've already though of that and I tried it. it's kind of weird though, because it does work with startx, but on reboot it simply goes to "flashing lights mode". But I'm pretty sure that the problem is during the loading of X, cuz it happens only after the NVIDIA logo appears. Dunno, I'm starting to think that my video card is damaged.......... but it's working just fine with fedora and winxp....

[dibl]

Re: NVidia 7600 problem

Interesting.

I dunno. After it fails to start KDM, does it leave a blinky cursor in the upper left corner of the black screen? Give it a few minutes after it appears to fail -- like 3 minutes or so. If yes, you should be able to do Alt-F1 and see the tty console. If that works, log in and

startx

FYI, about half the time, when booting 8.10, I get dumped to the console instead of starting KDM, after about 3 minutes of trying and failing to start KDM. I log in and "startx" and it starts KDM correctly. The other 50% of boots proceed correctly to the GUI login. I suspect the new KDM for KDE4 is more "touchy" about timing issues, or something like that.

[kourkoutas]

Re: NVidia 7600 problem

I've already tried that, but its completely non-responsive, the only way for me to get a terminal is booting in recovery mode ..... I guess I should better throw the towel and try again later on. Thank you very much for your help... I really appreciate it.

EDIT:

I found out that the 180.06 driver is out, and it has pretty good reviews. I will use it as a last resort, and I will tell you the outcome.

[kourkoutas]

Re: NVidia 7600 problem

I think I found the solution, even though it doesn't make any sense. I used the 180.06 beta driver, and everything seems to be working fine. However, before it used to work with the 173 driver.