NVidia Install will not Boot

[Grey]

I recently attempted to install and NVidia driver and now I cannot boot the system. After then NVidia logo flashes (rather a long flash of ~30 s) I get a blank screen.

Is there a way to change the initboot file or the X-config file before the system boots the X-server?

Thank you for your help.

-Grey

[Grey]

Sorry, I should give more information, I had posted a link to a page describing the changes I had made to cause this problem but I am a new userto this forum...

I have Fedora 8 and recently tried to install an NVIDIA driver so as to be able to use dual monitors. I used the NVidia-xconfig to reconfigure my xorg.conf file. All seemed well until the reboot at which point I got a long NVIdia logo flash and a blank screen with a flashing cursor at the top left.

I would like to use the NVidia driver ultimately, but at this point I will settle for getting into the system any way I can.

Thank you again, apologies for the double-post.

[Rubberman]

Boot into runlevel 3 (or boot from a live/rescue CD/DVD/USB drive), login as root, and from the console command line run startx manually. If you still end up with the cursor and blank screen, switch to another console with any of Ctrl-Alt-F1 thru Ctrl-Alt-F6 and log in again, reboot and try installing the nVidia driver again. You may need to manually configure your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file, or you may have the wrong driver file. In any case, please provide the following information:

1. Make+model of nVidia video card/hardware you are using.
2. Distribution+version of Linux you are running.
3. Kernel you are using (output of uname -r).
4. The name of the nVidia driver file you are installing.

[Grey]

Thank you for your assistance, Rubberman. I have been able to restart X with my old nv xorg.conf file.

Before this, and after a non-X reboot, I ran startx manually - no luck. At the blank screen there is no response to my keyboard and thus I cannot switch consoles. However a manual edit of the xorg.conf file and a reboot proves to solve the problem.

For anyone that is interested in this - once Nvidia driver is installed the xorg.conf file can look like this (with certain adjustments per your system):

#------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Xorg configuration created by user

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "default configuration"
Screen 0 "Screen0"
InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Keyboard0"
Driver "kbd"
Option "XkbModel" "pc105"
Option "XkbLayout" "us+inet"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard0"
Driver "nvidia"
Option "TwinView" "True"
Option "TwinView" "RightOf"
# Option "MetaModes" "1440x900,1680x1050"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Videocard0"
EndSection
#------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

There are various forums posts around which describe how to construct this (as a new user I cannot link to anything).

I had to turn this xorg.conf into a read-only because it was being overwritten after every reboot: chattr +i /etc/X11/xorg.conf

In answer to the questions from the responder I am using:
1) Hardware: Quadro FX570 256MB GD
2) Linux: Fedora 8
3) Kernel: 2.6.23.1-42.fc8
4) Driver: Linux-x86-195.36.24-pkg2

Thank you again, very much, Rubberman, for your attention.

-Grey

[Rubberman]

Yes, well I have had similar problems in the past when using the nvidia configuration tool, or allowing it to configure my xorg.conf file when installing the driver. So, now I just tell it to leave my xorg.conf configuration alone and deal with it manually when necessary. I think it is broken for a lot of systems. Well, I'll just have to rattle some cages over at nVidia and see if they can sort it out, eventually. It took about 6 months, but they finally fixed the 64bit driver to stop flashing big red pixels when displaying full-motion video, or sucking up a big portion of your cpu. That last thing wasn't a major problem when running on my 8-core system, but it did affect the responsiveness of applications like firefox. It's a LOT better now - no pixel flash, and CPU utilization by the Xorg server is very reasonable, especially with current fireforx releases on Linux (I'm running 3.6.3).