Hi guys

I am having some trouble with loading distros like suse, fedora, ubuntu and knoppix on my system. I just upgraded my video card to a eVGA 6600GT from an MSI 6600Le and still suse...etc will not load, i have no problems with slackware, sabayon and pclos. The only thing i could think of is my monitor says no signal on it all the time, maybe because im in the basement. my monitor is a acer AL1916W, i have a asus A8N mainboard with 1GB of memory, cpu is Athlon 64 3700, so the hardware is good. does anybody have any idea why these distros will not load on my system. and can somebody explain to me why i get the no signal error on my monitor when i launch it.

This is: eVGA NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT ??
What exactly do you mean by "load"? Will a distro install or not? Will a live distro like knoppix or ubuntu desktop show a GUI? Could you use linux before changing the video card?

Your monitor is giving a no signal error because it is not receiving a signal ... presumably the video card isn't sending one. This happens when drivers for the graphics card are not loaded or the card is broken.

http://gentoo-wiki.com/HARDWARE_Asus_A8N-SLI
... this is gentoo on your board.

http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=144173
... fedora core 6 on your board

well thats the thing i could install and get a gui with slackware, sabayon and pclos but none with ubuntu and suse etc. i have windows installed right now and it works fine. when i had the MSI card i had the same problem. I was told to changed the card but even with a card change i still can get a gui with the distros i menthioned. yes the card is the eVGA Nvidia eGeforce 6600 GT to be exact. i downloaded the drivers from nvidia, i have them installed, my montior is set to the max resoultion at 1440x900 with refresh rate at 60hz. the only thing i could think of is, im getting the no signal message because im in the basement.

Why would being in the basement give you "no signal"? Is the monitor and the video card on some sort of wireless link?

I take it that ubuntu, suse and fedora would install then?
Will it work with the "nv" driver but not the "nvidia" driver? (Check /etc/X11/xorg.conf to make sure which driver is being used. My ubuntu install was using "vesa" when I looked.)

Note: you should install the nvidia drivers for Ubuntu, RH6 and SUSE from the official repos, not from nvidia. The ones from nvidia can damage X.

well i mean i installed the nvidia drivers after i did the windows install. i am unable to get a gui for suse and ubuntu.........i really dont know what the problem is with this thing now.

Sorry - you have successfully installed nvidia drivers for windows?

Lets focus: which distribution would you like to use?

well i want to use suse, ubuntu, fedora, slackware, sabayon and pclos.........right now im only able to use the last three. I also want to try some other ones like forsight, knoppix, linuxmint and a bunch more that i've downloaded. wow im a linux junkie now.

Oh-kaaay - you want to play around with lots of distros...?
Well - virtualization would be the way to go for this. Read about Xen (free) and VMWare (non-free).

Meantime - pick the one you want to try next.

i.e. will Ubuntu 5.10 Edgy-Eft (Desktop) produce a gui OK?

It helps to have a working live distribution handy or to dual-boot with another linux. You don't need windows any more, and that can mess things up anyway.

http://easylinux.info/wiki/Ubuntu:Edgy
... Ubuntu 5.10 Guide
http://www.mjmwired.net/resources/mjm-fedora-fc6.html
... Fedora Core 6 Installation Notes

Start the installation - don't worry about the proprietary drivers to start with - and then start a new thread in the appropriate distro section of LQ concerning any problems you have.

Be sure to note anything unusual about your hardware setup... like: what's so special about being in the basement?

Any error messages should be recorded and quoted.
The results of dmesg relating to your problem too.
Video problems will need xorg.conf and the xorg logfile errors.

Have fun.

Yeaaaaa, I have the gforce MSI NX6600LE, I understand you noonmid27, ionno bout anyone else and if there is a solution to this problem but i am in the same boat with you sinking.

When noonmid27 was talking about none of the distros's would load like "knoppix,ubuntu 6.06 -n- 6.10, fedora" even gparted, the live disc's "live-cd - live-dvd" would boot up to right after the boot bar loader and the screen would go black and say "Input Not Supported". Now I have an Acer AL1714 LCD & a Phillips 107 T6 CRT, on the acer it shows Input Not Supported now on my Phillips it shows 81k/183HZ Frequency Is Out Of Range.

I am starting to believe it is either a MSI or 6600 series graphics hardware problem.

I have onboard VGA "intel intergrated graphics" as well, so i did a little test ok?

I shutdown my PC and pulled the 6600 out, booted up into bios and enabled Internal VGA Graphics and hooked my LCD and CRT monitor up at different times, booted up every single distro-live-cd that i have which are about 10 of em including gparted, Guess What??? They All Worked...

This is the reason why i believe it is in with MSI or the 6600...

Plz reply with comments.

Hmmm... sounds like the video card is giving out bad information about the default refresh rates and such. 183Hz would be an odd refresh rate. You can set video parameters at the boot: prompt (Ubuntu has extra menus you can access via the function keys which talk about this).

My G-Force 6600 works fine in Dapper - havn't tried Edgy.
My laptop required extra options to boot the live CD with anything other than a black screen. I think I used: "noapic nolapic vga=777" (Try vga=ask)

Ubuntu live will autodetect the 6600 card fine and then use the nv driver, which won't provide 3D acceleration. It will also try to auto-detect your screen settings. Probably you just need to boot the parameters for your screen.

If you can get to a terminal (i.e. non GUI mode) then you can try:

$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

horizontal sync = 60-70
vertical refresh = 70-160

(Or look up your monitor specs and put in just the value there instead of a range)
Also see:
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=187012

If both monitors support DDC you can comment out the HorizSync and VertRefresh entries in xorg.conf completely. That way driver will use optimal settings for each based on the DDC data. Think you should also at least log out of X session if your going to swap hot though, so vid driver reinitializes properly.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Display_Data_Channel

If it still doesn't work try another VGA cable, or switch to DVI which always works right.