Changed video card, won't boot [solved]

[Paul Goelz]

I'm a bit stuck here. I know what the problem is but I can't figure out how to solve it :(

 

I changed my ATI Radeon 7000 AGP for an Nvidia eGeForce 6200 PCI and the Mandriva boot stalls at the "starting HAL" step and opens the CD drawer. Although there is no text to state as such, it seems to be asking for the install CD, looking for drivers.... if I boot in interactive mode, it starts hard drake and then asks for install CD #1. However, in either case, when I insert CD 1, it reads it and then spits it out and asks for CD #1.

 

I am about 99.99% certain that the CD I have is in fact the very CD that I originally installed from. I even burned another from the repository. The boot text states I am running Mandriva 2007.0 and that is the image I burned. But for whatever reason, it doesn't recognize disk 1? Or disks 2-4 for that matter.

 

Unless I can get past this, my Mandriva installation is dead. Note that I had a similar problem in PCLinuxOS after installing the card. However, in PCLinuxOS, it dropped to command line and I was able to log on as root and run XFdrake and it installed the required drivers just fine.

 

Any ideas? I tried searching here but didn't get much.

 

Paul

Edited December 10, 2007 by Paul Goelz

[AussieJohn]

Try doing a dummy upgrade of Mandriva.

It doesn't take long and is simpler because at the end of the process you have the ability to do various things such as selecting Video card etc as if you were doing a reall install.

 

Cheers. John.

[scarecrow]

Just start in interactive mode, and do not load HardDrake.

You will get a VT login, where you should run xfdrake and set your videocard as vesa. You can install the proprietary nvidia driver later.

[Paul Goelz]

Just start in interactive mode, and do not load HardDrake.

You will get a VT login, where you should run xfdrake and set your videocard as vesa. You can install the proprietary nvidia driver later.

Unfortunately, that didn't work. I was able to enter interactive mode and start HardDrake but no matter what I tried to set the video to (VESA, etc.) it kept asking for disk #1 and then rejecting it.

 

Try doing a dummy upgrade of Mandriva.

It doesn't take long and is simpler because at the end of the process you have the ability to do various things such as selecting Video card etc as if you were doing a reall install.

That did the trick. I was able to set the video card to Geforce 6200 and it loaded the drivers from the same Mandriva "disk 1" that it was rejecting in all other attempts. Go figure.

 

FWIW, if there are any dev's reading.... I would not have known that I could do a "dummy upgrade" or install over the top of an otherwise working system (as opposed to a clean install) from anything I read when simply booting from the install disk. It is one of my pet peaves that the Linux install / upgrade / bootloader install routines are very poorly documented and rarely if ever tell you up front (ie., before beginning any install / upgrade process) what your options will be within the install process. I never know, for example, whether it is going to overwrite my MBR without asking. I know from experience that Mandriva does not, but some do. And you have to complete much of the install before finding out. On booting from the CD I would like to see an opening screen telling me (in understandable language) what I will be able to do and what I will be able to configure and where I will be able to put the boot loader BEFORE the install begins. If that had been available here, I would have known as soon as I booted from the CD (which I did a couple times specifically to see if there was a repair option) that I could have done an "upgrade" as opposed to a fresh install.

 

And it still doesn't answer why it kept rejecting disk 1. The "upgrade" process was far too fast for it to have changed much, if anything, and it never asked for disks 2-4. That tells me that the "disk 1" that I used was indeed the disk 1 from the original install. I am mystified why it would not accept it when it asked for "disk 1" during interactive boot.

 

In any event it is solved. Thanks!

 

Paul

Edited December 10, 2007 by Paul Goelz

[scarecrow]

Well, I told ya to ***STOP*** HardDrake, not start it (it was autostarted, anyway!), but since it's solved it doesn't matter...

[Paul Goelz]

Well, I told ya to ***STOP*** HardDrake, not start it (it was autostarted, anyway!), but since it's solved it doesn't matter...

My bad.... that was a typo. Sorry. Here's what really happened.

 

I entered interactive startup like you said and did not allow HardDrake to start when it asked. That allowed the boot to continue past the "starting HAL daemon" point and it eventually dropped to command line. At that point I started XFdrake (not HardDrake) which detected my Nvidia card just fine. When I told it to load the driver, it opened the CD tray and asked for disk 1. I inserted disk 1 but it ejected it and asked for it again. I tried all four disks just in case, same results. Same as before.

 

Unless I am missing something obvious, the problem seems to be that my installation disk 1 is not recognized as such by XFdrake or HardDrake but IS recognized during an actual installation.

 

Paul

Edited December 10, 2007 by Paul Goelz

[AussieJohn]

I have had my own little bit of drama regarding video cards.

I convinced my friends to return the ATI Radeon card they bought and exchange for an nvidia card. No matter what I tried with the ATI card it would not work correctly even though the ATI driver installed without error or complaint.

 

They got a GeForce FX5500 256mb card and I installed it and used my dummy upgrade procedure and rebooted into 2008 with absolutely no troubles at all.

 

Now came the problem. I did su then root password then init 3 then root then password.

CD to the location of the nvidia driver then the usual sh NVIDIA +++++++++++.run.

The driver install ran AOK. then reboot and all seems ok up to the point where the nvidia logo usually flashes up then a blank screen and it stays that way. Reboot but same again and unable to use verbose at this point to see what the trouble is. Darn. I use a live CD to look at xorg.conf and it is correctly showing nvidia instead of nv so I change it back to nv, a reboot and I am back into 2008 OK.

 

I try a couple of times with the driver install procedure again but now it only goes part way through giving an error message that it can't install as if there is no matching kernel-source or matching kernel-devel which I know is in place and was also there in the beginning. :wall: :wall: .

 

My friends said to leave it running without the driver because the only thing requiring it is their 3 favorite screensavers. We can fix that aspect later.

 

Any suggestions anyone ???.

 

I seem to remember in the back of my mind somewhere about the newer nvidia drivers having problems with earlier versioned cards and it was suggested that a much earlier archived driver was great and fixed the problem. I did a bit of googling but can't seem to find it but maybe someone can remember what it was.

 

What I find perplexing is that my card is an FX5400 with 128mbs and it is working excellently with the all of the past 5 to the present, drivers.

 

 

I hope some can help and offer thanks in advance. Cheers. John.

[AussieJohn]

No ideas anyone ???. :unsure: :unsure:

 

John.

[scarecrow]

The FX you have should run fine with the current driver series. It seems that for some reason (probably mismatching kernel-source) the nvidia module does not build properly.

Have you tried to use the prebuilt nvidia driver from the non-free repo?

[AussieJohn]

Thanks scarecrow.

The kernel-source certainly does match the kernel. That is the first thing I always check.

 

No, I haven't tried the prebuilt driver yet. I would have expected the nvidia one to be as or more reliable than the pre-packaged one. :D

 

When I get the machine to work on in the next few days (The owner will be in Adelaide for a fortnight) I will be able to give that a try as you suggest.

 

Cheers. John.

[edwardp]

Before I installed Mandriva on this 10-year old system, I had to replace the video card as it had a bad chip on it, causing the video to flicker if almost anything was done (hard drive activity, mouse button press, etc.). I bought a brand new card with an nVIDIA GeForce 5200 on it, which had a digital monitor input on the back, I used the analog adapter with it, not only did the system not boot up, it didn't get past the BIOS! Apparently, the technology of that card is so new, the BIOS (revision dated 1998) did not even detect it as a video card (it beeped three times, indicating it could not find a video card installed).

 

I then took a chance and installed a 3dfx Voodoo3 2000 PCI video card, Mandriva accepted it with no problems when installing the system and it's working great. :)

Edited December 14, 2007 by edwardp