[SOLVED via fresh reinstall.] NVIDIA GeForce 6150 LE / Acer X203H 20” VGA Monitor

[Mark the Auditor]

roblm,

OK; I tried loading the 4.15.0-20 kernel, which was the oldest one showing in the GRUB bootloader. 1280x1024 is still the maximum resolution. Here's the output from the Terminal command inxi -Gx:

Graphics: Card: NVIDIA C51 [GeForce 6150 LE] bus-ID: 00:05.0
Display Server: x11 (X.Org 1.19.6 )
drivers: vesa (unloaded: modesetting) FAILED: nouveau
Resolution: 1280x1024@0.00hz
OpenGL: renderer: llvmpipe (LLVM 6.0, 128 bits)
version: 3.3 Mesa 18.0.5 Direct Render: Yes

Yet again, nouveau is still showing as FAILED.

At this point, I'm willing to give 1 or 2 more things a try, but I'm getting closer to doing a fresh install and starting over, even though all the work I've done to set things up to this point would be gone. But if that's the only way to fix this issue, I'll do it.

Mark the Auditor

[roblm]

Use this command but don’t post the output: sudo update-initramfs -u
Reboot. Check if the nouveau driver is loaded.

If that doesn’t work, then open Driver Manager and check that xserver-xorg-video-nouveau is the selected driver.

If Driver Manager looks OK, then use these commands: sudo apt purge nvidia* and
sudo apt install --reinstall xserver-xorg-video-nouveau libdrm-nouveau2

Log out and back in.

[Mark the Auditor]

roblm,

The saga continues; I ran the first command you gave & rebooted.

When I run inxi -Gx, it STILL says:
drivers: vesa (unloaded: modesetting) FAILED: nouveau

So the nouveau driver is STILL not loading.

When I use Driver Manager, the only hardware for which a driver option appears is my Netgear USB WiFi ac adapter. There is no mention anywhere about anything video-related.

There must be a way to tell the OS to NOT load the VESA driver and to load the nouveau driver instead.

[Mark the Auditor]

In trying to figure all this out, somehow I did something that’s messed up my ability to login to my system now. When I enter my password and hit Enter, the screen goes black for 2 seconds or so and the login screen appears again.

So, I’ve got another problem now, but I hope it’s one that is more easily correctable than the screen resolution issue that keeps going on.

Thanks. Linux has a steep learning curve, I’ve noticed, but I’m gradually absorbing and understanding more and more. Just keep bearing with me; I’ll get to a higher capability level in time. I’m in the Linux honeymoon stage right now.

[roblm]

When I use Driver Manager, the only hardware for which a driver option appears is my Netgear USB WiFi ac adapter. There is no mention anywhere about anything video-related.

Then how did you install the Nvidia driver that you stated in your first post? Driver Manager should show xserver-xorg-video-nouveau and nvidia-304.

Did you download the nvidia-304 driver from Nvidia’s website? If yes, how did you remove that driver?

In trying to figure all this out, somehow I did something that’s messed up my ability to login to my system now. When I enter my password and hit Enter, the screen goes black for 2 seconds or so and the login screen appears again.

Try going back to the newer 4.15.0-24 kernel, since booting with the older kernel did not help.

[Mark the Auditor]

roblm,

Honestly, with this having gone on a while now, I don’t remember how I installed the NVIDIA driver, but I remember using a Terminal command containing “purge nvidia*” to get rid of it.

My GRUB loader showed 2 other kernel versions: one ended in 23 and the other ended in 20. Nothing in any kernel resulted in a maximum screen resolution better than 1280x1024.

When I did reboot using the current/most recent kernel (ending in 24), I then encountered what I saw referred to elsewhere as the “login screen loop”. I input my password, press Enter, the screen blanks, and then the login screen reappears with the opportunity to enter my password.

Obviously, I need a way out of the “login screen loop” first in order to resume continuing to get the nouveau driver to load correctly.

I think that if things regarding the screen resolution don’t get resolved by the of the day on Sunday that I’ll do a fresh install and start over again.

[roblm]

I hope you have been using Timeshift, the system restore utility, so that you can restore your system to an earlier time in case of problems. Hopefully there is a snapshot taken of your system before installing the Nvidia driver.

Right now, you’re using the same vesa driver and resolution that you were using when you started this topic.

The mystery continues. Your Driver Manager program is not working correctly. I just checked on one of my older PCs that has an optional integrated GeForce 7025, which is very similar to your GeForce 6150, and with that GPU enabled, Driver Manager shows both xserver-xorg-video-nouveau and nvidia-304.

The only other step I can think of is to use this command:

Code: Select all

sudo apt install --reinstall libgl1-mesa-glx libgl1-mesa-dri xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-video-nouveau libdrm-nouveau2

If you reinstall Mint and have similar resolution problems, then I suggest starting a new topic, so other users don’t have to read through all these posts.

[Mark the Auditor]

roblm,

This will be my final post on this topic; I reinstalled Linux Mint 19 Xfce 64-bit edition this morning and am in the process of setting everything back up. I've already got the Wi-Fi back up and connected and am about to set the printers up. Once that is done, I'm doing a Timeshift Snapshot (by the way, I did run a Timeshift Snapshot earlier in the week, but that was after the driver stuff started happening, so restoring from it would've just recreated the problems). Just for grins, here is the current output of the Terminal command inxi -Gx:

Graphics: Card: NVIDIA C51 [GeForce 6150 LE] bus-ID: 00:05.0
Display Server: x11 (X.Org 1.19.6 )
drivers: nouveau (unloaded: modesetting,fbdev,vesa)
Resolution: 1600x900@59.95hz
OpenGL: renderer: NV4E
version: 2.1 Mesa 18.0.0-rc5 Direct Render: Yes

As can be seen above, nouveau is showing as the default graphics driver. I'll NOT try to install anything NVIDIA-related now. The Driver Manager didn't show anything display-related, but the resolution is now where I want it and I'm proceeding forward from here. I think I'm going to stick with the 1600x900 resolution instead of using 1280x960 (or whatever it was I said earlier this week).

I'll mark this topic as [SOLVED by a fresh install].

Thanks once again for your help; I wish we could've resolved it without my needing to do a fresh install, but I think everything that could possibly be attempted to fix the issue was definitely attempted.