Updated to SuSE 9.1, installed nVidia drivers, now lost GUI!!!
 

Hi!

I hope someone can come to my rescue. I'm typing this from my much hated Windows partition, wishing I was playing with SuSE instead!

I just updated my SuSE 9.0 machine to SuSE 9.1, then ran the online update, which included the drivers for nVidia. Everything seemed fine, until I logged out to log in as root. The login was text only, no GUI, so I used the command startx to initialize my GUI session. As I did so, there was an error message about the nVidia driver (sorry, con't remember what it said!).
I couldn't start the XWindow at all.

I rebooted the machine, and everything went fine until the stage where I get the GUI login - I got nothing but a black screen!

I presume that the nVidia driver update was installed wrong - but how can I recover from that to get my machine working again? There is some crucial data on my SuSE installation I do not wish to lose, otherwise I would just re-install.

Any help will be gratefully received!

I'm still a total :newbie: !

try modprobe nvidia. Also double check your /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 file and make sure the driver is set as nvidia.

Yes check your /etc/X11/XF86Conf or /etc/X11/XF86Conf-4 file. Look for the section pertaining to your Display driver. You'll in that section where it says driver. make sure its "nvidia", instead of the default of "nv"

hi and thanks to you two for pointing me in the right direction! Although I wasn't able to boot SuSE 9.1 far enough to access the system, I managed to get at the configuration files when I used Knoppix. And the settings for the nVidia were totally wrong, so no surprise I lost my GUI!
I managed to extract my data, then, being a bit of a coward, did a fresh install. Now I will try updating again, and this time I'll check my graphics card configuration before login out!

Cheers! :D

There seems to be a definite problem with my video card - a GeForce 4 MX440 8xAPG - and the update nvidia drivers available from the SuSE update. As soon as these are installed, I lose the GUI on restart, as well as any access to configuration through YaST before restarting the X server.
The screen goes blank (black) in runlevel 5.

Might this be a kernel or an IRQ problem? Configuration settings in the /etc/X11/XF86Config files seem to be correct, at least the second time after attempting to update the nVidia drivers.

hEre's a fix to cure the video right after installing the patch after yast... It worked on my and my g/f's suse 9.0, 9.1 installs. This does the same thing as previously mentioned in xfree86config


su
"telinit 3" to get to get to run level 3 (no X system started).
run "SaX2" to start the video configuration program.
if a button pops up saying use the suggested settings, click "change config"(i mean comon, it's not working, right?)
Expand "Desktop" click on graphics card
notice the current name for the driver
click change config
click properties of that card
be careful here, notice the driver that's selected. click another driver, then click back on the origanal!
click finish
notice new drive name(hopefully)
click finish, test the server
If you see the nvidia logo and the test server pops up everything is all good!
Close SaX2 and save settings
telinit 5 and see if everythign works!

Thanks very much for that, exabrial, I'll certainly give that a try!
At the moment I'm feeling a bit too chicken to try the update again, but I'll get to it in the next couple of days! :D

Thanks again to all of you for your help.
I tried to update the nVidia drivers one last time before replacing my dying hard drive, but I end up with the same problem again, despite following all the wonderful advice.

I now have the feeling that it is either an IRQ conflict or a compatibility issue between my motherboard (MSI KT3 Ultra) and my video card (nVidia geForce4 MX 440 8xAGP) as the same occurs trying to boot "Arabbix" (based on Morphix).

I'll upgrade my mobo at some stage, so I'll probably wait until then to upgrade again.

Thanx again, though, all help is enormously appreciated and I have learned a bit more about running Linux in the process! :D

Terri

at root prompt type:

init 3 (may have to hit f2 to clear splash screen)
login as root
sax2 -m 0=nvidia (thats a zero not a the letter o)
configure with sax2
init 5, or reboot with shutdown -r now