9.10 Won't Install/boot - screen flickers

[zane.sims]

Hello all,

After encountering this issue: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1272825 with the following Workstation:

HP Workstation XW6200
Video Card: NVidia Quadro FX 3400
4 GB RAM
2x 3.2 Intel Xeon 64-bit Processors

I decided to try 9.10 to see if the problem was resolved. I attempted a fresh install (not an upgrade) but the live cd and the install option kept stopping at: "30%: Detecting filesystems..." Then the screen would just flicker very rapidly until I restarted the computer manually. I thought that I would try the alternative text-based install cd. Everything Installed ok (unlike the other cd which would not boot the graphical installer). The problem is that when I rebooted after install, GDM would not load. It gets to a text-based login prompt and then just flickers rapidly like before.

I have successfully installed the following operating systems without this problem:
OpenSuse 11.1
Ubuntu 9.04 (but with other problems in the post mentioned above)
FreeBSD 8
PCBSD 7.1.1
Windows XP SP2
Windows 7 RC
Fedora 12

I don't know why Ubuntu 9.10 is giving me this issue, but it is obviously specific to it. If anyone has any ideas, please let me know. I prefer ubuntu over other Linux Distros and would like to resolve this if I can.

Thanks in advance,
Zane

[darkod]

Sounds like you have a driver problem. Boot into the recovery mode option and in the menu select to use something like "root with networking" to have internet.
At the command prompt install video driver handling package EnvyNG with:
sudo apt-get install envyng-core envyng-qt

Run it in text mode with:
envyng -t

The rest is easy. It will offer to download driver (I didn't remove the current one), it knows where to get it. After the installation of the driver finishes reboot and see if that helped. There was similar problem and that helped the person, but can't find the thread right now.

[zane.sims]

Thank you so much, this was exactly what I needed! I assumed it would use a working generic diriver until I installed the proprietary one. Whatever it was using, I guess it didn't like my Video card.

Thanks again!
Zane