Display problems (NVIDIA card) after upgrade on 8.04

[sroy]

Hello everybody,

I ran into problems with my desktop display after I installed one of the upgrades recently. Here is a brief description of the problems that I am facing.

I have Ubuntu 8.04 running on a Dell machine which has an NVIDIA graphics card. I had twinview working on it with Dell and HP monitors. I also configured it to get my Wacom Intuos tablet working on it. A week ago, I upgraded my system with Linux kernel 2.6.24-23 and since then I have been stuck with display problems on my desktop. Here is a sequence of problems and troubleshooting that I did to fix them.

1. First, it would get stuck during reading files to boot up with a "qc timeout error". To fix that, I added the parameters "noapic and acpi=off" to the boot command.

2. After that fix, boot up started to happen correctly but it would now get stuck while starting up Xserver (only a blank screen). So, after making a backup copy of my customized xorg.conf file, I reset the xorg.conf by booting through the "recovery mode".

3. The above got the Xserver started but my screen resolution got set at 800x600 resolution. I had the "nvidia-glx-new" package installed. So, I tried to reconfigure the nvidia settings by "dpkg-reconfigure nvidia-glx" but, after all the settings, it kept on giving me an error about a battery:
"FATAL: Error inserting battery (/lib/modules/2.6.24-23-generic/kernel/drivers/acpi/battery.ko)"

So, currently, I am stuck at 800x600 resolution on my machine. I remember to have seen problem #1 earlier (after one of the upgrades) and I had fixed it back then, just by following some instructions from various forums. However, this "battery" error is new to me, although I am not sure if it has anything to do with the Xserver configuration.

I have attached my current "xorg.conf" (the one with 800x600) resolution and my original xorg.conf (xorg.conf.nvidia_and_wacom) with this post.

I would really appreciate it if someone could give me any pointers to fixing the aforementioned problems.

JFYI, the specs of my desktop are:
Dell Vostro 400 Mini Tower, Intel(R) Core™2 Quad Proc Q6600, 2.40GHz, 2GB RAM, 160GB, 16X (DVD+/-RW) Burner Drive, Dell 20 inch Widescreen E207WFP Analog Flat Panel Display, 128MB NVIDIA(R) GeForce(R) 8300GS

regards,
Soumyaroop.

[techieMoe]

You must reinstall the Nvidia drivers whenever you change your kernel version. The driver is a kernel module that must be compiled against your currently-running kernel source. Reinstall your Nvidia drivers and see if that clears things up.

[sroy]

Dear technieMoe,

I apologize for the late reply. I went down with fever last week and then I was on travel till today.

I reinstalled nvidia-glx-new (version 169.12+2.6.24.16-23.56) through synaptics package manager and rebooted my computer but the display got worse after that. I had to fix my xorg.conf yet again by booting via the recovery mode. What is the difference between nvidia-glx and nvidia-glx-new? I had the "new" one installed earlier when things were working just fine. Do you need any other information to figure out this problem? I have been stuck with with this for almost 4 weeks now.

regards,
Soumyaroop.

[coopstah13]

nvidia-glx is for "legacy" cards

use nvidia-settings utility to set up display settings, you can install it from command line with sudo apt-get install nvidia-settings

[sroy]

Thank you for your tips, coopstah13.

However, this is the problem that I am running into:
1. When I run "nvidia-settings", it comes with an error message saying something like, "you do not appear to be using the nvidia x driver".

2. When I run nvidia-glx to use the nvidia driver, I get that error message about the battery!

I shall try it again when I go home today, i.e., run "nvidia-glx" and then "nvidia-settings".

regards,
Soumyaroop.

[coopstah13]

my suggestion, is to take the working xorg.conf file, and just change vesa to nvidia, and see if that works, also, get rid of all those things under the module section as well, you shouldn't have those in there

[jmadero]

did you completely remove the nvidia driver and then reinstall it? That may help. When you reinstalled did you just tick the "reinstall" option or do a removal and then an install?