nvidia gpu has broken my system.

[sir_guy123]

i'm going to try and make this short because i've spent about 6 hours on this so far!
I have been trying to get a geforce3 ti 200 graphics card to work on my mint 12 install. I have been running mint on this computer for about a year with only a few minor problems and i really like the os. I've tried to run the nvidia installer but after finally finding out how to stop my xserver it said there were various incompatabilitys with my kernel. I tried altering my xorg.config but with no success. Basically after trying for hours with my graphics getting worse by the hour i ended up only being able to boot into tty1 (a non-graphical ui) after a while i gave up and put my old gpu back in, but still i was only able to boot into tty1. I managed to delete my xorg.config, i guessed by now it would be mashed anyway, and rebooted into a gui (yay) but not the gui i'm used to, i've got no infinity menu, no menu at the bottom of the screen, just a black bar at the top and bottom with -i think- applications and places on the left and network etc icons on the right at the top.
So... Does anyone have any idea what i've done and more importantly how to get my old system back? Is there a way to auto configure my xorg.config?

[claudecat]

Sounds like you tried to install the NVIDIA.....run installer from the command line, which can work, but seems like it didn't for you. It would have been easier (and the recommended way) to click on the "Additional Drivers" icon under System or in the Control Panel and install from there. I'd first re-run the NVIDIA....run file, but with -- uninstall at the end of the command, then do the "Additional Drivers" thing I mentioned. Once you do that, a reboot should get you back into your familiar looking system. Good luck!

[sir_guy123]

thank you, i'm at work at the moment so i'll give that a go when i get home.

[sir_guy123]

tried to un-install but it said i had no drivers installed
then tried to go to additional drivers and it said i had no proprietary drivers installed, its strange because everything seems to work but its as though I'm in a different GUI, like KDE instead of gnome or something

I'm considering installing mint on a spare hdd then copying the config file over, do you think that might work?

ive managed to log in using the different gui's by clicking the gear on the login page but still no infinity.

[mank_in]

I think the latest proprietary drivers for your card is Nvidia 71 ( see http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux-disp ... river.html) . I don't know if this version works in ubuntu 11.10 ( kernel 3.0)
Nvidia 71 not in ubuntu repository , you cannot install using "additional driver". The only driver you can use is nouveau .

check your VGA driver with :

Code: Select all

inxi -Gx

[sir_guy123]

thanks mank_in, i'll try that.

a bit of an update, i've installed mint on a spare hdd and been playing about to see what i can see; there is no xorg.config in X11 and i still have infinity. i have played about with the different GUI's on the log in screen and the one i'm locked into using on my main hdd is GNOME CLASSIC.
so... is there a way of starting the standard gnome through terminal? then i might get some error messages to play with.

Thanks.

[sir_guy123]

inxi -Gx at the moment gives me

Graphics: Card: ATI RV350 AP [Radeon 9600] bus-ID: 01:00.0
X.Org 1.10.4 drivers ati,radeon unloaded: fbdev,vesa Resolution 1152x864@75.0hz
GLX Renderer Gallium 0.4 on ATI RV350 GLX Version 2.1 Mesa 7.11 Direct Rendering Yes

I'll put the other card and hdd in and if my screen is legible copy&paste the output of that too.

Back soon.

[AlbertP]

For a GeForce3 you'll have to use the legacy 96 driver. On Mint 11 this driver is non-functional. But on 12 (and 10 or earlier) you can get the nvidia-96 package from the repository. nvidia 71 indeed supports it as well like mank_in said but that driver does not support anything newer than Mint 9/10.

[sir_guy123]

argh! I'm close to pulling my hair out with this. I've tried the additional drivers route, i have 3 drivers it wants me to download, so i let it get on with it but it stops responding in the middle of the 3rd one i've downloaded the .run file elsewhere because i'm on pay as you go internet and now the damn machine wont recognise my memory card. Is there no way of re-installing mint without re-partitioning?

[sir_guy123]

the good news: i've managed to install the driver with the .run file and it went without any errors.
The bad news: my resolution is stuck on something like 400x600 which is really really low and i cant seem to tell my system what my monitor is, i've used terminal to bring up my monitor details (i cant remember what program i used) and it basically says there is no monitor.

[Frederick]

I have a problem similar to this, in my opinion Linux mint is borken for alot of NVidia users. My install is currently broken and im just about to reinstall 11. or perhaps some other distro entirely.

[mikecrosoft]

Hello everyone. My advise is to stay out of problems and instead use the ppa in this link https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-x-swat/+archive/x-updates, this will let you install and update nvidia drivers to the latest available version by the easiest possible way. If somehow you have messed the xconfig file you can try to generate a new one by running this command in the terminal: nvidia-xconfig; I think the best you can do now is to purge any nvidia package from your system, add the indicated ppa, install the nvidia-current and nvidia-settings packages, run nvidia-xconfig, and run x:

Code: Select all

su
apt-get purge nvidia-*
add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates
apt-get update
apt-get install nvidia-current nvidia-settings
nvidia-xconfig
service lightdm start


Regards!.

[mank_in]

NVIDIA driver from ppa:ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates is for Geforce 6xxx or newer

[mikecrosoft]

Ooops, sorry my bad, I didn' knew that ; good you noticed this before he tried that.. Here is a ppa with 71 version of nvidia drivers https://launchpad.net/~guido-iodice/+archive/nvidialegacy. I think the nouveau way is the best in your case; but here you have another option. Regards!.

[mank_in]

hello mikecrosoft, I know you are willing to help
please check in overview of published packages of ppa:guido-iodice/nvidialegacy, if you click in "any series" , that ppa for ubuntu natty and lucid ( for LM 11 and 9 )

@sir_guy123
maybe you can see readme file for NVIDIA 71 .

[AlbertP]

@mank_in & mikecrosoft: He doesn't need nvidia-71. That driver does not support todays X.org versions. He needs the nvidia-96 driver which is working again with Mint 12 (in Mint 11 it wouldn't install).

@sir_guy123 If the nvidia-96 gives you the wrong resolution, please try the nvidia X Server Settings program to fix this. It should be in the menu. It's also possible that you have to run sudo nvidia-xconfig in terminal to fix it.
If you don't manage to set up things in X Server Settings, you can use the repository package of nvidia-96 instead of the .run file from the website - the repository package has a newer (and easier) version of the X Server Settings program.