Change in NVIDIA driver behavior with nvidia-304.88 driver update

[T_W]

Having lots of difficulties with the recent nvidia-304.88 driver update. I am running Ubuntu 12.04.2 LTS. I have a Dell M4400 with docking station. I have two monitors plugged into the docking station. All worked reasonable well before the update. I had to disable the laptop panel as the card does not support three displays.

Since the update to the driver if I plug in a second external monitor all screens blink on and off continually and the system becomes unusable. This can sometime lead to an X lock up where the screen is entirely black, but I can move the mouse. This is sometime solved by unplugging the second monitor and restarting the X server.

I have noticed that the behavior of the driver has changed dramatically with an external monitor. It used to be that if I plugged in an external monitor, nothing would happen until I reconfigured things with nvidia-settings. With the driver update as soon as I plug in an external panel, something seems to detect the panel automatically sets up TwinView without any interaction. Normally, this would be a good thing, but I think the problem has to do with auto detection of the 2nd external monitor and potential conflicts with the two external monitors and the internal panel.

Any ideas? I checked the forums and the information on the nvidia-304.88 driver update, but I don't see anything indicating a change in behavior this big? Any ideas how to prevent the nvidia driver from automatically reconfiguring the desktop when a panel is plugged in? Any advice on how to rollback to the pre-304.88 version?

[midnightramen]

you might want to try the latest drivers from nvidia.com You'll have to go through a roundabout process by hitting Ctrl+Alt+F1 to get to the command prompt, stop the lightdm service, run the script to install the driver, blacklist the nouveau module, etc, but so far, I have not had any issues with the Nvidia 310.40 on an Ubuntu 12.10 desktop.

Alternatively, there is also a package out there "nvidia-experimental-310" which may be easier to install. should be accessible using 'apt-get install nvidia-experimental-310'. I would also suggest installing the 'nvidia-settings-experimental-310' as well.

**EDIT: changed 'yum' to 'apt-get' . Confusing my distros here.

[T_W]

No change in behavior with nvidia-experimental-310. It does seem to the system trying to make all three displays active at the same time. If I can manage to deactivate the panel on the laptop, then I can get the two external displays working. Unfortunately this involves unpredictable pulling of monitor cables and rebooting until I can get the system stable.

Man, the nvidia-304.88 driver update is a nightmare.

Any advice on downgrading the driver?

[T_W]

Well, I downgraded to nvidia-current-295.40-0ubuntu1.3 and nvidia-settings-295.33-0ubuntu1 and the system is working again.

To downgrade, I followed the instructions here. Basically a manual download from launchpad followed by a manual 'dpkg -i' of the old driver.

As I had nvidia-experimental-310 installed, I also had to remove this package.

Anyone have any idea what in the nvidia-304.88 driver update caused such a radical change in behavior?

[wojeda]

... Anyone have any idea what in the nvidia-304.88 driver update caused such a radical change in behavior?

I sure don't. All I know is that I was running on an old FX4000 and Kubuntu 10.04 LTS. What ever that driver was, was working flawlessly.

I just upgraded my card to a new GTX640 and since I was in upgrade mood, I went ahead and moved Kubuntu to 13.04. Then my old drivers were not an option anymore and was forced to apt-get "nvidia-current", which brought down v304.88. Now all hell broke loose. My dual monitors do not clone anymore and my X11Vnc does not work any more either.

Why do people have to fix that which is not broken ?!?!?