I am using OpenSuse 10.2 64bit and am currently experiencing some random freezes. The whole system will freeze and the only thing I can do is restart (the keyboard and everything is froze). I have and Nvidia GeForce 6600 GT video card. I have tried the newest driver and some older drivers and nothing seems to help. If I uninstall the nvidia driver then I do not experience the freezes.

I have read many forums with people having the same problem I am but with ATI instead of Nvidia. My system does not freeze under Windows so I know that it must be a driver problem and not a hardware problem (power supply, memory, etc). I also have an HP DV2000t laptop running OpenSuse 10.2 64bit with an nvidia card and it does NOT freeze.

Is it truly the video card that is causing these problems? What can I do to fix it? Are there some logs that I can look at and copy and paste here that would help? Thanks in advance


My system:

OpenSuse 10.2 64 bit running KDE

AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (2.0 GHz) skt 939
MSI K8N Neo4 Series (MS-7125) Mobo
Nvidia GeForce 6600 GT
2x1GB PC3200 RAM

I have a very similiar system to you on my old p/c with the same graphic card. Suse worked perfectly (using the nvidia driver) but the random freezers happened with Win XP. It used to drive me mad and I spent ages trying to get to the bottom of things - eventually discovered it was the mouse driver.

You have done all the sensible things so far and I can only suggest that you try alternative hardware on a one by one basis.

I second the idea of replacing hardware one piece at a time, I often use the process of elimination to troubleshoot. If the hardware doesn't turn out to be the culprit, as in you try another 6600gt card and it still freezes, try different versions of the driver. You might also try the nzone forums, I think they may be better able to help you if no one here can. Nvidia drivers are their thing, not the linux community's. Not yet at least.

Is your card AGP or PCIEX? If it's AGP, you might try a different AGPGART driver. I know my motherboard (ASRock 939 dual sata) did better with the ULI gart driver, since they did some funky things to get AGP and PCIEX on the same board.