Blinking underscore, nomodeset xforcevesa not work.

[Silhorn]

Heres the story,

I have a pc with a Gigabyte MA770 S3 Rev 1.0 motherboard. Up until recently I had Mint Cinnamon on it. Until a week ago the 8800 GT GPU I had on it died.
So I ordered a 9500 GT to replace. Upon booting it would boot and then freeze at splash screen or boot and then restart itself after splash screen.

So I put 9500 GT in a ASUS M2N MX SE PLUS motherboard. Black screen on booting but using live USB this time.
I restart and hold shift to get to GRUB menu and then press tab to edit the start mint entry.
I replace quite splash with nomodeset and press F10. Boots up fine. I fresh format and install mint on same hard drive.
First boot up into hard drive with newly installed mint it does the same thing, black screen. I restart and then do nomodeset again which doesn't work.
I then try nomodeset xforcevesa which works and then I update Mint OS and install nvidia-current.
Restart without editing boot entry and now it works. Video playback and website with videos works very smooth.

I now put back 9500 GT and hard drive into the first motherboard.
It boots sometimes freezing at splash screen or it goes to black screen with blinking underscore.
Tried nomodeset xforcevesa, no luck. Tried to reset CMOS and reset to defaults no luck . BIOS is up to date.
I have changed same hard drive between different motherboards before and no problem so I don't think it's because of that.

Is there any other commands I can try to put in with nomodeset xforcevesa? Or is there something else I can do to fix this problem?

[Pjotr]

If you still cannot boot try one of the following solutions:

Try with "nouveau.noaccel=1" instead of "nomodeset".
Try with "noapic noacpi nosplash irqpoll" instead of "quiet splash".
Use the "Compatibility mode" to boot and install Linux Mint.
After the installation, use "Advanced Options" -> "Recovery mode" from the boot menu and choose "resume".

Source: https://www.linuxmint.com/rel_sylvia_xfce.php

Finally, launch Driver Manager and install the recommended non-free Nvidia driver. Then reboot normally.

[Silhorn]

ok I have tried a bunch of stuff with the Gigabyte motherboard.

With hard drive I installed mint on from Asus motherboard I have from the normal entry:
nomodeset gives Blinking underscore
nomodeset xforcevesa gives Blinking underscore
nouveau.noaccel=1 Restarts pc by itself
noapic noacpi nosplash irqpoll Restarts pc by itself
recovery mode and resume with no entry editing freezes after a list of OK's. So same like Blinking underscore screen but without underscore.

Live USB editing normal entry:
Nomodeset give Blinking underscore I see error message something like: end kernel panic not syncing fatal exception in interrupt
nomodeset xforcevesa gives Blinking underscore
nouveau.noaccel=1 gives All black screen
noapic noacpi nosplash irqpoll gives All Black screen
Compatability mode boot without editing entry makes PC restarts by itself

On google some people with similar problem and they say BIOS may need an update for the new GPU to support. My BIOS up to date but I had no idea
I had to check if my GPU was compatible. I thought all 3.0 and 2.0 GPU's would work on a 2.0 Motherboard? I never seen any GPU support list on the motherboard website only CPU website...

I'm about to give up with this motherboard and just use the ASUS one but this one has so many expansion slots and SATA ports it's very dissapointing to give it up

[Pjotr]

What does the development version of Xubuntu 18.04 do? Warning: still highly experimental:
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/daily ... -amd64.iso

If this does work, it's likely that the upcoming Mint 19 (expected early this summer) will also work.

[Silhorn]

Using default entry:
No editing freezes at splash screen after a little while.
Editing with nomodeset xforcevesa gives blinder underscore after "Starting version 235"
nouveau.noaccel=1 gives black screen with solid underscore top left corner.
There is no compatability mode selection so can't try that.

[Silhorn]

Ok so I made a minor breakthrough.

I decided to try and try another distro different from mint and ubuntu. I downloaded PCLinuxOS and put on USB.
Some items on the boot menu had distorted text.
I tried default item and booted with it freezing at boot screen
I tried editing with nomodeset xforcevesa and it would give me the same kernel panic error in my previous posts.

Now I try with nouveau.noaccel=1
First try: I got black screen but I have a mouse pointer which I can move.
Second try: After a little while with the mouse pointer the keyboard selection list comes up and I click ok. Then after a little while the desktop appears. Using for a little while more the pc freezes.
A few more tries same problem.

I think I also tried noapic noacpi nosplash irqpoll but cant remember exactly what happend. But I know i still couldn't get into the desktop.

There was an option in the boot menu about something loading into RAM. I used that and can get into desktop but same problem freezes after a little while. I tried nomodeset xforcevesa with this menu option same problem.

When I goto desktop and into nvidia settings it shows all the gpu info. So having able to get to desktop + see gpu settings I think it rules out my fear of motherboard not recognizing GPU problem?

I did have this freezing at desktop problem before I bought the new GPU. It was actually giving me artifacts + freezing. After I replace with new GPU no more artifacts but I guess freezing is still present.

Do you think is hardware problem maybe motherboard dying or is it a linux problem?

(I would like to try windows on this pc to compare but the windows licences are locked to motherboard so I can't install windows and use my laptop licence number )

[Silhorn]

ok so I have just tried to replace cpu. Now I cant even get to splash screen without pc restarting.
I spent so much time trying to fix this pc. I am calling it quits with this motherboard. Its old anyway.

I have moved the cpu to the asus motherboard which is working fine so I am just going to stick with that. I think it may of actually been faulty motherboard.

Thanks for trying to help. Appreciate it.

[Silhorn]

Figured out the problem.

For anyone else in the future who may have this problem:
I tried one last thing which was to change the ram in the BIOS from 800mhz to 667mhz. It worked even though ram is DDR2-800 PC-6400.
Tried another brand of ram on 800mhz. It worked too.

[milota]

Hi Silhorn,
did the RAMs you tried differ in anything else than the brand? CL?
I have 2 GPUs RX560 4GB and RX570 4GB. With these 2 all is fine, but as soon as I add another RX560 4GB (same like the one that already works), the system does not boot (blinking underscore).
I wonder if it is the RAM (Patriot 4 GB DDR4 2 400 Mhz CL17) that could have a problem...
Thx