Nvidia problem

[Setton]

I installed Ubuntu 10.04 three days ago alongside Windows 7 on my desktop computer. I booted it up, I could choose between Ubuntu and windows, but the drivers for my Nvidia card would not work. The driver manager was blank, and nothing appeared after I ran the update tool. after floundering with it for a little over a day, I caved and installed Ubuntu 10.10 (My thought process being it's the newest so chances are it has the newer drivers. I'm not sure when the different versions were actually released.)

That's where the first facepalm hits. Not sure what I did, but I ended up wiping my hard drive. No problem, all I really lost was my steam saves, some anime, and my minecraft save. But, I had Ubuntu 10.10, the drivers worked, everything looked pretty, even the dual monitors worked beautifully. Then, i worked on trying to install World of Warcraft. I used the guide in the Ubuntu documentation section to install and play wow, but I couldn't get it to install as described in the guide. So, i copied the directory off my iPod, and used it in place of an external hard drive and threw everything in the documents folder. Upon running wow however, I was greeted with this (i can't post url's to other sites, so it's a picture of an object in wow floating in black. no hud, no esc menu, no ground, sky, tree, water textures, but some random texture do stay and those that stat depended on which way i was facing) which made it clear to me that there was a driver issue. Still, I tried reconfiguring wine, adding the code to the wtf config file, still my computer would not run wow on anything higher than lowest graphics settings (with view distance set to good) Any higher than that, and all the textures would randomly disappear, and set to max the game didn't even load.

So, it wasn't a problem with wow, wasn't a problem with wine and I know my hardware can run wow on max settings at 60fps. This is where my latest problem begins.

I downloaded the latest Nvidia driver for my card for linux. I'm running a geforce 450 gts, and Nvidia's site gave me NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-260.19.29.run. So, i set about figuring out what a .run file was and how to use it. Setting permissions to allow it to run as an executable didn't work cause I needed root privileges. Shortly after that, the one who got me into all this (My wow friend who's bragging about having no less than 90fps at max settings) found me techieMoe's post on how to install Nvidia 3d drivers. With a combination of that, linuxcommand [dot] org, and denver's post on how to disable the xserver, I got it to install successfully.

Or so it told me. I restarted the xserver, my desktop popped back up. I thought "Great, I can still see stuff, I haven't broken it." but wow still wouldn't go past low graphics. All in all, nothing had actually changed. So, right before bed (and right before I registered here) I thought maybe I just need to restart for the new drivers to take effect. So I restarted. I'm greeted by the virtual terminal. I login, and try typing startx. My screen overflows with error messages.

And that's where I sit. I can't get the gui to run, my computer simply boot's to the virtual terminal on every startup. The error messages I get are as follows (Im not sure if this is ALL the error messages, I just learned that shift + pgup/pgdown let's you scroll, but it will only let my go up 4 lines)

(EE) NVIDIA(0): Failed to initialize the NVIDIA kernal module. Please see the
(EE) NVIDIA(0): system's kernal log for additional error messages and
(EE) NVIDIA(0): consult the NVIDIA README for detail.
(EE) NVIDIA(0): *** Aborting ***
Error: API mismatch: the NVIDIA kernal module has version 260.19.06, but this NVIDIA driver componant has version 260.19.29. Please make sure that the kernal module and all NVIDIA driver componants have the same version.
(EE) NVIDIA(1): Failed to initialize the NVIDIA kernal module. Please see the
(EE) NVIDIA(1): system's kernal log for additional error messages and
(EE) NVIDIA(1): consult the NVIDIA README for detail.
(EE) NVIDIA(1): *** Aborting ***
(EE) Screen(s) found, but none have a usuable configuration

fatal server error:
no screens found

Please consult The X.Org foundation support at wiki [dot] x.org for help
Please also chesk the log file at "/var/log/Xorg.0.log" for additional information

ddxSigGiveUp: Closing log
giving up

Your help is greatly appreciated

[artuyild]

Hello.

I have several nvidia cards installed in my linux machines. It should not be problem as you've encountered.

First of all, you should boot your ubuntu machine by choosing safe boot option. And then add nvidia module to blacklist.conf, to prevent the kernel to load at boot. After normally booting it successfully, install nvidia driver from additional drivers option. and remove nvidia module entry from blacklist file before restarting your machine.

I also compiled nvidia driver from its codes (as you did) to get high performance as installing not standard nvidia module but cuda development version of nvidia driver. You can find it in the CUDA section->developers->download in nvidia web site.

I hope my nvidia experiences help you.

[Setton]

Thank you artuyild! Im heading off to visit family and friends for christmas, so I will probably be unable to try/post anything for a few days, but I will definitly give that a try first chance I get!

[Setton]

Sorry for the late response. I tryed artuyild's sugestions, and I have everything running at the capacity it was before I messed up my gui. I also tryed using the cuda development version of the drivers, but the same thing happened. I noticed this time though that I get the following error at the start of the driver install.

The distribution-provided pre-install script failed! Continue installation anyway? y/n

No makes the instalation fail, yes causes the problem I had earlier of my gui not working. I also tryed following the steps in the Nvidia readme, but that didn't work either.