Wadcutter
August 20th, 2011, 06:22 PM
My EVGA 7600GT video card suddenly died. A friend gave me an EVGA GeForce 8400GS to replace. I'm running a homemade AMD Athlon 64 3700 box with 2 GB memory and 2- 250 GB WD hard drives. First drive has Win XP OS and second drive runs Ubuntu 10.04. I was using Ubuntu about 99% of the time before the video failed. After installing new vid card, I deleted old driver in Win and installed new driver off the CD that came with the card. Windows system was then 100% back to normal.
My grub booter is set up to default boot to Ubuntu with Windows the last choice which can be done manually. After installing new Win video driver and confirming it worked, I re-booted the computer and let it go to Ubuntu. The results was the usually flashing cursor for about 10 seconds, but instead of the Ubuntu splash screen popping up, the monitor went black for about a minute and then shut off the same as if I had shut down the computer.
That was over a week ago, Since then I have tried everything I can think of but nothing changes. I have read and tried numerous ideas from other posts on these forums (such as hitting ctrl, alt, +/- to change screen resolution) but I still have a black screen.
I tried booting up from my original install CD which is ver 9.10, not 10.04 (I upgraded to 10.04 by directly downloading online and never made a 10.04 CD). I can get into an Ubuntu desktop with that old CD and I checked to see that it showed the highest resolution for my monitor (a 22" wide flatscreen whose native resolution is high-1920x1280?? don't exactly remember at the moment). I also tried loading the generic Nvidia 185 driver but it didn't seem to take. I downloaded the latest Nvidia driver for Linux onto a thumb drive and tried to install it here, but was refused because the message said it had to go into "root" and I didn't have permission. I don't know how to establish permission when booting from an old install CD. I'm sure I have administration rights under my regular 10.04 installation but can't see it due to the blank screen.
I've tried at boot to go to the recovery mode listed right below the default Ubuntu boot option, but when I do, a whole series of text flashes on the screen and rolls down to the word "done" with a flashing cursor at the very end, The cursor flashes for about 5 seconds and then the screen goes black. I've tried to enter some quick text at the cursor to keep it from going black, but it doesn't stop it. It wants to go black and it does so.
I can probably get into a terminal from the old 9.10 CD, but have no idea what I would do once there. I'm not afraid of text commands--many years ago I used DOS regularly and was comfortable with text commands- but I just don't know Ubuntu/Linux commands nor do I have any idea of what the problem is and what I should be tweaking to fix it. I'm pretty much a Linux/ubuntu noob-I've been using it for about a year, but it has worked so well and so intuitively with almost zero problems, that I haven't really learned much about its nuts and bolts.
I would be grateful for any help (has anyone ever posted a problem on a forum and said otherwise?). I'd hate to have to re-install the whole OS because of one little video display problem.
Thank you.
My grub booter is set up to default boot to Ubuntu with Windows the last choice which can be done manually. After installing new Win video driver and confirming it worked, I re-booted the computer and let it go to Ubuntu. The results was the usually flashing cursor for about 10 seconds, but instead of the Ubuntu splash screen popping up, the monitor went black for about a minute and then shut off the same as if I had shut down the computer.
That was over a week ago, Since then I have tried everything I can think of but nothing changes. I have read and tried numerous ideas from other posts on these forums (such as hitting ctrl, alt, +/- to change screen resolution) but I still have a black screen.
I tried booting up from my original install CD which is ver 9.10, not 10.04 (I upgraded to 10.04 by directly downloading online and never made a 10.04 CD). I can get into an Ubuntu desktop with that old CD and I checked to see that it showed the highest resolution for my monitor (a 22" wide flatscreen whose native resolution is high-1920x1280?? don't exactly remember at the moment). I also tried loading the generic Nvidia 185 driver but it didn't seem to take. I downloaded the latest Nvidia driver for Linux onto a thumb drive and tried to install it here, but was refused because the message said it had to go into "root" and I didn't have permission. I don't know how to establish permission when booting from an old install CD. I'm sure I have administration rights under my regular 10.04 installation but can't see it due to the blank screen.
I've tried at boot to go to the recovery mode listed right below the default Ubuntu boot option, but when I do, a whole series of text flashes on the screen and rolls down to the word "done" with a flashing cursor at the very end, The cursor flashes for about 5 seconds and then the screen goes black. I've tried to enter some quick text at the cursor to keep it from going black, but it doesn't stop it. It wants to go black and it does so.
I can probably get into a terminal from the old 9.10 CD, but have no idea what I would do once there. I'm not afraid of text commands--many years ago I used DOS regularly and was comfortable with text commands- but I just don't know Ubuntu/Linux commands nor do I have any idea of what the problem is and what I should be tweaking to fix it. I'm pretty much a Linux/ubuntu noob-I've been using it for about a year, but it has worked so well and so intuitively with almost zero problems, that I haven't really learned much about its nuts and bolts.
I would be grateful for any help (has anyone ever posted a problem on a forum and said otherwise?). I'd hate to have to re-install the whole OS because of one little video display problem.
Thank you.