I am running 64-bit Kubuntu 8.10 and I just bought a 9800 GTX card. After I put it in and powered up the machine, it booted up to "Checking battery state..." and hung there, so after a ctrl alt del I powered off the machine, removed the card, plugged back into the onboard video(geforce 8200) and when I reboot it does the same thing. I've tried several things, all I can do is get to a prompt. I can't start x manually from there. I booted a live cd and downloaded the driver from nvidia, rebooted to a prompt and installed it, which it said was successful, but have the same issue still? Any ideas?

nvidia-xconfig did you run that. if so I am lost to. well I guess start in recovery mode or what ever kubuntu does theses day's and try running nvidia-xconfig this should rewrite your xorg.conf to load your driver . then type telinit 5 and that should get you to your login gui.
9800 GTX is not supported in stable nvidia. drivers.

Yeah, the nvidia utility runs it at the end of the install. I tried redoing everything, but to no avail. I have no idea what is going on here.

You didn't mention it.

Did you enter the BIOS Setup and disable the internal graphics chip, making any adjustments in the BIOS settings for the new card before you installed it? If you have done the first, you may have missed something in the second.

You might check your mother board manual for the BIOS particulars.

Does the Kubuntu live-cd boot both with the onboard chip as graphics and with just the new card as graphics?

If it isn't that...

You might try to force the loading of the vesa or nv kernel module at boot. That would give you a desktop to begin with again. There are probably threads here on the forum that will tell you how. Try the search function at the top of the page.

If you have a on board video chip and you added a pci or agp I wonder if for some reason your bios did go back to default. just like said. You never mentioned it. you have a prompt so some video is running if you can get to bios some video is running you may have built the wrong nvidia kernel double check that happened to me.
this is the package for you driver. when first doing a driver search it lead me to this one I do not understand why but your card is part of the older driver that has been enhanced for different cards.
so both will build but only one works weird.

I think that is a 32-bit to which Drakeo linked.

If it is not the 180.51, it would be this for the 64-bit 173.14.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux_d...173.14.18.html

The Nvidia list of supported chips for the 180.51 does include the 9800GTX, but could be incorrect

http://www.nvidia.com/object/IO_18897.html

I didn't think that you could use a less "powerful" driver on a more capable chip. If this is the case, you might try the 173.14 first and then the 180.51 driver version later. The 9800GTX may be a factory overclocked version of a more limited chip, in fact giving better performance.

I have just installed the 180.51 on a 8600GT under openSUSE 11.0 and it went well, but anecdotal testimonials won't solve your problem.

I did disable the onboard in the BIOS. My 9800 GTX is an overclocked chip from the factory.

I got it to install and boot into X, but now I keep getting a flash every few seconds. The Kubuntu live cd does the same thing, but the ubuntu live cd does not...maybe I solved the linux issue, but maybe there is a KDE issue...which would be odd since right now I am running off a suse live cd and it appears to be perfectly fine. I love KDE but Kubuntu has always seemed flaky to me.

A PCI-E X16 card, is it?

Is it an 11.1-KDE4 64-bit live-cd that functions while Xubuntu 8.10 64-bit does not? Have you tried the latest PCLinuxOS live-cd as a test? It is new, KDE, with an already installed Nvidia driver. If it boots with the Nvidia driver, it would point to the difficulty being with Kubuntu. You might try more live-cds of linux if you can, just to check that it is not some curious hardware problem.

I thought there might be something else in the BIOS that caused a problem, but the evidence doesn't support the hypothesis. Have you tried with the latest BIOS, or the Optimized Default settings?

There is no lack of distros with KDE, though some might be better at KDE 4.X than others, and finding one that has no trouble with your system is beyond my powers. I am on openSUSE 11.0 with KDE 3.5 again after trying 11.1 with KDE 4, which worked flawlessly, although without sound. I may wait for 11.2 and a better version of 4.X; you might wait for the next Kubuntu.

Persevere

Yes, I've used my share of distros in the past, I just got comfortable with Kubuntu.

Anyways, after booting with a suse live cd, the problems don't seem to be as big, but it seems to have some flicker. A mandriva live cd actually detects the card, loads the driver, and enables compiz right out of the box. So either I can use that to try and figure out what is wrong with my kubuntu situation or just install mandriva.

EDIT- I forgot, the Mandriva live cd runs a the 32 bit kernel, where my kubuntu install and suse live cd are running the 64 bit. Might be nothing, but its another variable

Hardware?

I am inclined to suspect that you increased the load on some critical part of the system when you installed the 9800GTX. Have you tried to run memtest on your RAM?

How large and how old is your PSU. That card draws more power, perhaps much more than the board or the PSU is delivering stably. Does your board have an ATX 12v connection (square 4-pin)?, and what is the recommended minimum PSU for the board?

The hardware hypothesis assumes that a 64-bit live-cd is more of a load or less suitable than a 32-bit. Has there been any general problems with 64-bit on the system before? However, the critical factor may be a buggy KDE or poor driver support for that card.

You might consider my recommendation of PCLinuxOS as a test; it has the latest Nvidia driver, 180.22.

http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=pclinuxos

Could you run a live-cd that works and do "lshw" and post, just so one might see what you have?

The power supply is brand new, 850 watt, I bought specifically for the card, since it requires 2 6-pin power connectors.

I decided to just install Mandriva, rather than dealing with trying to fix Kubuntu. The card is working fine, actually, better than fine, it looks awesome.

The thing is, I don't see why Mandriva just worked. Even booting a kubuntu live cd, I get crazy video issues, where with the Mandriva live, it picked it right up, showed the nvidia splash screen, and just worked.

I'll miss using kubuntu, because it was becoming very comfortable, but Mandriva is a solid distro in its own right.

Well, it looks like this issue is not sorted out. Still getting hang ups from time to time in Mandriva, I even upgraded to 2009.1(even tho I knew that wouldn't help) with latest nvidia driver. I guess its an issue of waiting to see if it gets sorted out with the drivers.