[SOLVED] Nvidia 180.29, Intrepid, geforce 7600 GT and 15inch widescreen monitor

[mudlark]

I just thought I would post my experiences which have been long and painful. I am no expert, but this worked after many tries at other methods such as ENVYng. And the KDE4 driver installer.

I had the 177 nvidia drivers working fine , but decided i needed the newer driver(idiot). I down loaded the new dr iver on to the Desktop and followed the nvidia instructions.....fail. tried installing various drivers and suffered the black screen of indifference and resolution problems. Today I managed to sort the problem.

1. Use synaptic to find every package that has nvidia mentioned and uninstall the lot. This included ENVYng and nvidia-settings and all older drivers and modules from goodness knows when.

2. Follow a guide I found but cannot remember where it came from. (Sorry mate)

3.Make a backup of xorg.conf before using the method.

4. Install nvidia-settings package.

sudo apt-get install nvidia-settings

5. Download driver from Nvidia (I found 180.29 from main download page). I downloaded to the Desktop folder that is now part of the new KDE4 experience, the capital D being required.

6. Press ctrl alt F1 and login with your password. Here the guide says connect to the internet, but I didn't 'cos I didn't know how!! Press alt+F2 and login then use

sudo killall kdm.

7. cd Desktop

8. sudo sh ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86-180.29-pkg1.run

9. lots of errors and verbose panics ensued, but I just passed on the lot. I said yes to run configuration.

10. startx and the damned X thing started

11 sudo reboot and the driver starts properly with the nvidia screen and googleearth works again.

I hope this works for you. If the thing crashes and you need to repair the xorg file then I use.

sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg

If this works then great if not don't shoot me please as I am no expert.

NOTES 1. My machine is a 686 dual core whatsit
2. I am using KDE 4.2.00.
3. Screen is a tiny 15incher from PCworld HII Vw15B resolution is 1280x720. I think it is made by Hyundai.
4. !80.29 available as of 11th february 2009.
5. motherboard ASUS P5B-VM 512 Mb RAM 901 BIOS
6. I have successfully used X server settings and Twinview to hotplug my Sony tv through an HDMI adapter/cable and subsequently returned to just the monitor.

[dibl]

Re: [SOLVED] Nvidia 180.27, Intrepid, geforce 7600 GT and 15inch widescreen monitor

I had the 177 nvidia drivers working fine , but decided i needed tyhe newer driver(idiot).

YES, you followed the rule! "If it ain't broke, you gotta try to improve it!"

If this works then great if not don't shoot me please as I am no expert.

You already established that it worked, at least one time for one person!

You apparently already had the linux-headers and build-essential packages installed, prior to running the driver installer. For those who want to use the downloaded driver installer, you need to first do these:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r` build-essential

Also if you have previously mucked with other versions of the driver or the nvidia-glx packages, you might need to

sudo apt-get remove --purge nvidia*

and possibly even

sudo rm -rf nvidia*

to get rid of it all.

And once you've got it installed and working perfectly .... refer to The Rule.

[mudlark]

Re: [SOLVED] Nvidia 180.27, Intrepid, geforce 7600 GT and 15inch widescreen monitor

Thanks mate for your comments. I didn't want to compete with your advice that's why I added a few hints to readers that my "fix" was found by trial and error / accident.

On a similar subject I did the dopey upgrade to KDE4 before understanding the full consequences...

Now i think KDE4 is fantastic although I do keep my music server on good old 8.04 and KDE3.5 just in case I trash my main machine. (Its inevitable I'm afraid!)

Cheers again,

Mike.

[mudlark]

Re: [SOLVED] Nvidia 180.27, Intrepid, geforce 7600 GT and 15inch widescreen monitor

I've done it again.

Nvidia have issued 180.29 and I've just used this method to upgrade and amazingly my machine still works.