Ubuntu 9.10 - nvidia driver 185 - black screen on startup

[stefano.bolli]

Yesterday I installed ubuntu 9.10 on a pc with nvidia graphics card mod. Geforce 6200. Enabling recommended restricted nvidia driver v. 185 caused black screen of death on startup because of an acpi error (cat /var/log/Xorg.O.log). I solved my problem in this way:

1) Install driver via Hardware Driver and do not reboot.
2) run a terminal and type: sudo nvidia-xconfig --nvagp=1
to create /etc/X11/xorg.conf with nvidia's agp enabled. You don't need to reboot.
3) type in the terminal: sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop
4) log in and type sudo gdm stop
5) your pc now should use nvidia driver

I hope to be helpful.

Bye

[gamerteck]

This worked...followed your directions perfectly except I used the 1.90 drivers in the hardware manager!!!

I have been trying to get my Nvidia 6200 to work for a week on my Samsung 46' HDTV and nothing on these forums or Google could help until now.
It's unbelievable that one simple option, "--nvagp=1", would solve my problem.

My Issue specifically, for search purposes, was that after the Ubuntu splash screen was displayed I would get the blinking input cursor, on the upper left hand side, and after about 5 seconds the cursor would disappear. My TV display would then go blank and would show "No Signal". I couldn't even get into TTY because the mouse and keyboard didn't function. I've attached what my xorg loks like after running "nvidia-xconfig --nvagp=1"

I can't express my gratitude enough.
Thanks again stefano.bolli. You seriously out loud!

[Perturbed Penguin]

How did you do all of this if it is freezing on you at boot? I seem to be having the same issue but I have no idea how you were able to do this, would you mind giving me some suggestions? Thanks!

[Perturbed Penguin]

Looks like it may, possibly be a shot graphics card for me actually so never mind, but thanks for the post.

[paperdiesel]

Yesterday I installed ubuntu 9.10 on a pc with nvidia graphics card mod. Geforce 6200. Enabling recommended restricted nvidia driver v. 185 caused black screen of death on startup because of an acpi error (cat /var/log/Xorg.O.log). I solved my problem in this way:

1) Install driver via Hardware Driver and do not reboot.
2) run a terminal and type: sudo nvidia-xconfig --nvagp=1
to create /etc/X11/xorg.conf with nvidia's agp enabled. You don't need to reboot.
3) type in the terminal: sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop
4) log in and type sudo gdm stop
5) your pc now should use nvidia driver

I hope to be helpful.

Bye

Stefano,

I just wanted to say thank you and let people know that your solution worked perfectly for me as well. I was pulling my hair out trying to figure out why my AGP GeForce 6200 was causing Ubuntu to freeze after log-in. I installed the latest hardware drivers, typed

sudo nvidia-xconfig --nvagp=1

and rebooted. Everything's running great!

Thanks man!

[dtkerns]

This seems to be my exact problem, but like the previous poster, I am unable to access the machine to enter the command. GRUB never gives me any opportunity to edit the boot. ctrl-alt-f1 does nothing. remote login (ssh) is denied.

[ngtybear]

I am having the same issue with 190.53 on a 7900 GS.

Sad things is, I did not have this issue with earlier versions of the driver. I could simply tell it to use "HD1080i" and it would work. I upgraded the driver for VDPAU support as I am now attempting to do HD.

[stefano.bolli]

This seems to be my exact problem, but like the previous poster, I am unable to access the machine to enter the command. GRUB never gives me any opportunity to edit the boot. ctrl-alt-f1 does nothing. remote login (ssh) is denied.

Hello!

You should select recovery mode in grub boot loader.
In this way you can prevent loading of your graphics system.
Log in with your username and password and then type
1)cd /etc/X11/
2)ls
to check if xorg.conf exists (karmik doesn't create it during
setup). if it doesn't exists, run this command:
sudo nvidia-xconfig to create a basic xorg.conf
3)now you have to modify it with nano. Type:
nano xorg.conf
4)Find this line:
Driver "nvidia"
and replace it with
Driver "nv"
In this way Karmik will use its own driver and not the third party one.
Restart your graphics system (sudo gdm start) and try to follow the steps in my first article.

Regards and
Happy new year!

[Perturbed Penguin]

Hmmm... now that is very interesting ngtybear. I also was having this issue and I also was using a 7900GS - I have already ordered a new card because I was convinced it was a hardware issue but that just seems odd that we have the same exact card.

[dtkerns]

thanks for the additional info, but as I said, I'm never given an opportunity to interrupt the boot. (It's a new install so only one kernel present) I could have reinstalled again but my thumb drive got swiped (long story).
My motherboard has both an AGP and a PCI-E slot, once it clicked that this was an AGP issue (some times it's the obvious things that are hardest to see) I stuck in a PCI-E video card I had and world peace was achieved!