Installing Video Driver

**card_ace** · May 8th, 2009

So following the advice in another thread i found the driver for my video card and downloaded it to an external HDD so i could get it to my machine. but now i can't seem to figure out how to install it. i'm assuming that i need a terminal code because when i try to click on it i can't make it work. please help?

**taurus** · May 8th, 2009

What graphic card do you have and what is the name of that file? Is it still on your external drive or have you copied it to your account, $HOME, on the harddrive?

**card_ace** · May 8th, 2009

here is the result of lspci | grep VGA:

Code:

carlton@carlton-desktop:~$ lspci | grep VGA 
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV18 [GeForce4 MX 440 AGP 8x] (rev a2) 
carlton@carlton-desktop:~$

and the name of the file is "NVIDIA-Linux-x86-96.43.11-pkg1.run"
and it is still on the external drive. i didn't know what else to do with it afterward.

**taurus** · May 8th, 2009

If you want to install nvidia driver by hand, you first need to shut down the X server. Then, install it. And if everything goes the way it should, assuming the drive that you have downloaded would work with your graphic card, you restart the X server again.

Press <Ctrl><Alt>F2 to get to a console. Log in with your username and password. Then, shutdown the X server with

Code:

sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop

Now, navigate to where you have mount the external drive with your nvidia driver and run

Code:

sudo sh ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86-96.43.11-pkg1.run

Once it is finished installing, you can restart GDM again with

Code:

sudo /etc/init.d/gdm start

Just so you know before you'll be surprised. The system will crap out if that is not the right driver for your graphic card. Then, you need to reconfigure your X server again if you want to get back into Gnome.

**card_ace** · May 8th, 2009

alright thanks for the help. and the warning. luckily i just had to make a second fresh install for a How-To for school. i'll try it out there and test it first before i use my good install. might not be able to come back til Monday, but i'll try to let you know how it goes.