I've got an Nvidia Geforce FX 5200 card, so when I installed Linux I downloaded the Nvidia video driver.

I installed it and changed the settings so X uses the "nvidia" driver instead of the "nv" driver. X works fine, I got to my desktop and everything appeared to be functioning properly. Then when I logged out of X and went back to the console, it was all garbled!!

The system was still working, because I could type "startx" again and get back into X where everything was working, but as soon as I left X and went back to the console I was garbled again. Also, ALT-Fx switching showed that all 6 consoles were garbled.

When I disabled the framebuffer console and went back to the standard VGA console, it came back clean after exiting X. But even the 640x480 framebuffer console came up fragged.

Any ideas? I hate using the console from X...I'd rather be able to shut it off and go back to the basic console.

same problem here!!

I have the oposite problem with an ati radeon 9000 (250). Switch virtual consoles then back to x and poof.
I have a workaround that may help people with this problem: Make a launcher on a gnome panel or kde (windowmanger etc.) equivalent that is in a place (like the upper left corner) where it can be dbl. clicked on while blind-folded. Set its target to "xrefresh" (/usr/X11R6/bin/xrefresh on my sys).
"xrefresh" should tell x to redraw and fix the screen.
For the garbled text console problem, the solution should be the command "reset" (/usr/bin/reset on my sys).
"reset" will re-read the terminfo etc. and fix the current console.
"clear" (usr/bin/clear on my sys) may work better on fb console.

P.S. I am using Lynx to post this, pls tell me if it looks normal, as I have no gui at the moment.

I had the same problem, and the solution for me was to add

vga=normal

to my bootloader.

I had that problem with ATi drivers on a Radeon 9000, which I fixed by going to 3.2.8. However, you might try upgrading to something like XFree 4.4 or XOrg.

To the nvidia users (before the thread got hijacked by the Ati folks )

It's a known bug in the nvidia framebufferdriver, use the vesadriver instead.

By trial and error, I have found that the "vga=" in lilo.conf can screw up a customized framebuffer argument string by replacing it or overriding it, ie in lilo.conf: append = "video=radeonfb:800x600-16@85" (which gives me a great 16bit 85hz small print, rather than the awful default- 640x480 8 bit 60hz). So I leave "vga=" out of the global section of lilo.conf and place the var in the individual (image=) sections that don't have a "video=" arg to suit.
The highest "video=" resolutions that I have found to work (with a few small glitches, like stuck pixels and characters from previous scrolls) for my radeon 9000 and viewsonic g773 monitor are: 800x600-16@85 and 1024x768-16x70. And I am still trying more (thank god for the auto "over frequency range" cutoff). For some reason I can't seem to get any working 24bit fb's, all "over range".
LavaDevil94- are you talking about the 3.2.8 ati proprietary driver with fire-gl, it is nice and runs IMO way faster than the windows driver. But unfortunatly this sys won't be a gaming machine, just a business form and gimp workstation. So without 3d needed I think the stock 2d gnu xfree drivers are fine. But if I run into trouble down the line I will take your advise and try the ati driver.
Distro on this machine is gentoo ~x86 (experimental) with a vanilla 2.6.5 (chopped of course) kernel, patched with the win4lin patch by NeTraverse. Even with the ~x86 keyword, gentoo currently only supports XFree 4.3.0-r6 and drm (dri) drivers 4.3.0-r7 which I think is patched with current drivers on the fly during the ebuild.
No matter, in a year or two the open source radeon 250 driver will rival the proprietary, but don't quote me on that.