I screwed up my display drivers...
 

I have an nVidia GeForce4 ti4200 based video card, and I'm running Mandrake Linux 9.1. I installed the latest linux drivers provided by nvidia in order to enable acceleration. Everything was working perfectly, and I was enjoying the chance to learn linux from within a working GUI.

I know that the nvidia drivers were working, because the GL-based screensavers were running extremely slow before I installed the drivers. After I installed them, however, the screensavers were running quick and smooth.

However, just yestarday, the GL-based screensavers stopped working altogether. They simply displayed a black screen. Thinking that the nvidia drivers were to blame, I attempted to reinstall them by running the installation file "NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-4349.run" again.

It told me that the NVIDIA driver was currently running and could not be installed. So I booted into failsafe mode and ran the script again. It worked, and it reinstalled the drivers.

Then, upon rebooting, the graphical login screen refused to display and I was dropped down to full text mode login. I logged in and tried to "startx", but it gave me error messages pertaining to NVIDIA.

So then, I ran "NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-4349.run --uninstall" to unistall the drivers and to try to restore the display settings to what they were. Now when I try to start the computer, I get an error saying "Cannot start kdeinit. Check installation."

I would really appreciate any help with this matter. I was really starting to like Linux, but this is rather annoying.

Have gone into the XF86Config and changed the part that says "nv" to say "nvidia"? You may have to reconfigure X to get to a program like gedit to change the file. If you read the read the readme file on NVIDIAs site it explains everything. Good luck. Changing it to "nvidia" works every time for me.

Yes, when I originally installed the drivers (and got them working) I did change "nv" to "nvidia". So now that I have uninstalled them, I changed it back to "nv".

But I am still having problems. Any ideas?

You removed the Nvidia driver? If the Nvidia is working, it will show a Nvidia logo when X starts. I cant rememmber exactly, i think its xf86config form the line, it should start the XF86config and you would have to use the generic nvidia driver that came with the disks. It should get you back to a GUI interface. Then if you reinstall the nvidia driver you and change the XF86Config file to say "nvidia" before you reboot it shouldnt have a problem.

Sorry, its XFree86 -configure. That should let you set up the drivers to run from the disks. I have to run the Xconfig to reset the drivers for it to work with out the nvidia updated driver. I think it should work if you reconfigure the XFree86.

Alright, I got the GUI working again...
but the screen savers still won't display.

I'm not sure about other GL-based things, though. Any suggestions, things I should test, etc?

No problem. If the nvidia driver is working youll get the nvidia logo at boot when it starts xfree. You cant miss it. If you didnt get it the first time, it wasnt configured right. You should be able to reinstall the Nvidia driver now, but before you reboot change the XF86Config to say "nvidia". Then every thing should be cool. If you get the logo at boot, it installed right. Good luck.

If you reinstall the nvidia driver now it will work. You would have to go root and run gedit or what ever to change the file. But you have to do it before you reboot or it will do what it just did and youll have to reset the XF86config again. GL.