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mvidberg

Member

Registered: 2007-08-31

Posts: 8

Is this a kernel, nvidia or motherboard problem? (asus m3a MB)

I just installed a new motherboard/CPU/ram but kept the same video card and harddrive.   Now everything seems to be working except  xorg hard crashes (black screen, keyboard locked) if I try to use the "nvidia" driver... works fine if I specify "vesa" (but then my video resolution sucks and no 3D).  I tried pacman -Syu so everything is updated.

My new motherboard is ASUS M3A (chipset AMD770/SB600) and my video card is nvidia 7600GS.

Anybody have any idea if this is a kernel issue, nvidia driver issue or motherboard problem?

Last edited by mvidberg (2008-03-09 22:41:01)

mvidberg

Member

Registered: 2007-08-31

Posts: 8

Re: Is this a kernel, nvidia or motherboard problem? (asus m3a MB)

I've now also tried rolling back the kernel and a different video card (nvidia 8600GT from my other computer) and still get the same result.  Black screen and locked up when I do startx (not even the Alt-SysReq keys work).  Anybody have any ideas?

EDIT: I forgot to mention that the first time I booted after putting in the new motherboard, it couldn't find /dev/sda, but the fallback kernel worked... and the nvidia driver was working, Xorg came up fine.  Then I ran pacman -S kernel26 to fix the /dev/sda problem.  After rebooting, this xorg/nvidia problem started.  Now the new kernel and fallback kernel do the same thing... neither lets me load xorg/nvidia.  So I guess I am stuck using the vesa driver with horrible resolution until this gets fixed.

Last edited by mvidberg (2008-03-09 22:39:26)

Schnouki

Member

From: Nancy, France

Registered: 2007-10-28

Posts: 21

Website

Re: Is this a kernel, nvidia or motherboard problem? (asus m3a MB)

Have you tried an older version of the nvidia driver? I'm using nvidia-96xx because I had the same problem and it works for me now.
Otherwise you could try the nv driver (pacman -S xf86-video-nv), it doesn't support 3D but it is a lot better and faster than vesa for 2D...

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There's no place like ::1

mvidberg

Member

Registered: 2007-08-31

Posts: 8

Re: Is this a kernel, nvidia or motherboard problem? (asus m3a MB)

Older version of the nvidia driver did not work.  I have a spare HD on the same computer and I tried installing Kubuntu on it... everything works fine.  Latest nvidia driver loads with no issues.  So, there is something obviously borked with the kernel.  I may stick with Kubuntu for a while to try it out and perhaps come back to Arch at a later time.

Thank's Arch Linux, you've been good to me for the past 3 years.  We may meet again.

Last edited by mvidberg (2008-03-15 00:31:00)