The system is a P3-800 on an ASUS CUSL-C motherbaord with an S-media Geforce 4MX 440

OK ive installed mandrake 10.1 and i have installed the nvidia drivers using the .run provided by nvidia. during the install i got an error about rivafb being part of the kernel, but from what i can gather that isnt a problem unless the module is actually running (which it isnt)

Anyway, i have loaded the driver into modprobe.preload, and set it in xorg.conf. I have disabled all other options and glx is enabled. I have also tried it with AGP set to 0 and Nologo set to 1

Anyway, on booting into X with the nvidia logo active, the logo doesnt go away and half of the task bar doesnt appear. Then whenever i open a window or menu, it stays frozen on the screen, even after closing. The same thing happens on all the settings ive tried (obviously without the logo active, it has the mandrake background) its fine when i use the nv driver, and useless when using the nvidia. Also when i manage to exit X when doing this, the terminal is corrupted and give me really big fonts, ive heard of that problem before, but no one else seems to be having any of these other problems in X

any help?

Welcome to LQ.

What kernel are you running:
uname -a

Which version of the nvidia drivers did you download?

Thanks

Im running kernel 2.6.8.-12mdk and nvidia 6629. However i did read somewhere that the new drivers dont work with mandrake? I have also tried installing the 6111 and the 4363 drivers (after installing the 6629) but both fail on installation.

Thanks for the help, Ive been working on this for about 2 weeks now with absolutely no progress!

I've not heard of them not working with Mandrake but it could be possible. Most likely it would be an incompatability with the kernel Mandrake ships with.

Have you tried using a vanilla kernel from kernel.org?
http://www.kernel.org

No i havent tried that, simply because i dont know how to :P Im fairly new to linux, in fact ive been on and off on mandrake for almost a whole month now

Take a look at this guide:
http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/Compiling_a_Kernel

i run the 6629 driver on MDK with no problems.try not loading it in preload and see if that helps.
the only issue i know of is under suse and letting YAST install the nvidia driver.

Yeah i tried loading it in preload, but without any changes. Still goes all funny. Im beggining to think it might possibly be the card. But that wouldnt explain why it works with the nv drivers would it?

what is the deal with suse.. im installing all my updates with yast right now, is the nvidia drivers gonna work??

Hmm well thanks for the help so far guys. I still havent resolved the problem, but i have found an RPM on Thacs RPMS. However i think i need to remove the current driver installtion to install it properly. I have no idea how to do this... Any help?