Why did it stop working.
 

Ok I set up Mandrake 10, and everything worked fine. Installed the nvida drivers and everything was fine. Got my wireless card to work and everything was fine. About a day later, sound stoped working. Couldn't figure out how to fix it, got mad so I turned off the comp. Later on I decided to give the sound thing another go.

So I turn on the comp and it tells me my hardware has changed, (somthing about nic card, my wireless card I believe ) and I tried to set it up, but to no avail.

Next I login and type startx, looks like its going to load, then it gives me an error, 104.

I checked my XF86-Config file and everything looks ok. I googled around trying to find out why this is happening but can't really find much. Saw a few things I'm going to try, like changing driver "nvidia" to vesa and such.

Anybody know why this happened, or how to fix any of it? I'm pretty new to linux and I'm kinda at a dead end.

Thanks,
Alex

UPDATE
Ok changed nvidia to nv and I can startx just fine. Wireless card is working also. I still do not have sound. Without the Nvidia driver I don't have 3D.

Also I keep getting errors in KDE. When it loads I get kcminit signal 11. Seems like almost every app I close I get a sigal 11 error.

UPDATE 2
Ok sound is working now, I'm on a laptop which has sound buttons on it, I had to log into Windows and use the buttons to turn them up. I still havn't figured out how to get x to load with the nvidia drivers.

Have you the kernel source installed for your running kernel?? You will need it installed as the nvidia driver installer uses some of the header files from the kernel source. You might also need to configure the kernel source by running "make oldconfig" in the kernel source directory. If you update your kernel or change some of the configuration of it, you may need to reinstall the nvidia driver.

When you've got that set up it's a matter of stopping whatever display manager you have running (using "init 3") and executing the nvidia installer. It will trundle along and compile the nvidia kernel module and install it in the right place for you. After it has finished you can re-start the graphical display with "init 5" so you can edit your config files more easily.

If you use a 2.6 series kernel your /etc/modprobe.preload should contain the word "nvidia" on a line of its own. If you use a 2.4 series kernel the file is /etc/modules
You will also need to edit /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 so that the "nv" entry reads "nvidia" and that glx is not commented out with a # in front of it.
Both the files will need to be edited *AS ROOT*.

After you get the driver installed and the config files edited and saved, restart your system and when your pc reboots you should get a nice nvidia logo before the graphical login screen appears.

If you have any problems you can always press CTRL+ALT+F1 to get to a console and login as root so you can edit the /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 file and change "nvidia" back to "nv".

Thanks for the response. I had already done that, however I edited everything as su.
I reinstalled the nvidia driver as root, and it seems to work fine now. I've turned it off and on a few times to test, and it still going. Thanks

OK it stoped working again. I get an error saying the nvidia driver won't load. Does anybody know why it works for a day, and then stops working. If I reinstall it, it works fine. I don't want to have to reinstall the nvidia driver every day.

Thanks.

Try adding the line: nvidia
to your /etc/modprobe.preload file.
You'll probably need to reboot for changes to take effect.

Just out of curiosity, which version of the nvidia drivers are you trying to install? The version number is the four digit number in between the 1.0 & pkg.run in the file name.

Im installing 6111. Do you happen to know why it works for like a day or so and then stops?
I added the line nvidia like you said, and I hope that it will still work tomorrow.

Thanks