How can I fix my nvidia display problem in Ubuntu 9.10?

drivers display ubuntu-9.10

7,847

I got the help of a friend and here's what he ended up doing: Booted into recovery shell. Edited /etc/X11/xorg.conf and changed "nvidia" to "vesa". This allowed us to run the desktop GUI without getting the problem. He then went to the list of available display drivers under the "hardware drivers" menu and we selected a previous version of the nvidia proprietary drivers (just previous to the latest). The package manager downloaded and installed these drivers. We then changed "vesa" back to "nvidia" in xorg.conf, rebooted, and everything was good. The reason I couldn't drop out to a shell from the start was that the video problem seemed to kill the keyboard too. We also tried connecting an external monitor per DigitalRoss, but we never got anything to display. So the bottom line is that I'm not on the latest nvidia drivers, but at least I didn't have to downgrade anything else.

7,847

Douglas Bodden

A mind forever voyaging

Updated on September 17, 2022

Comments

Douglas Bodden over 1 year

I had Ubuntu 9.04 working with nvidia display drivers, then I upgraded Ubuntu to 9.10. It boots to the desktop, the desktop looks great for a moment and then I get a screenful of pink and blue noise. How can I fix this? I've read that I should be able to drop out of the GUI with Ctrl-Alt-F1, but that doesn't work.
- GiH over 14 years
  
  are you running 64 bit or 32 bit?
- Douglas Bodden over 14 years
  
  running 32 bit.
Douglas Bodden over 14 years

I just have noise on the screen and can barely see the mouse move, so I can't use the menu
GiH over 14 years

sounds like bugs to me, id downgrade to 9.04 until they've figured everything out with 9.10... I don't see how you're supposed to activate the drivers without being able to see anything. Try rebooting and see if you have enough time before your screen messes up to activate the drivers.
Douglas Bodden over 14 years

There is very little time before the screen turns to noise. I can boot in recovery mode to a root shell. Can I downgrade from there?
Douglas Bodden over 14 years

Ctrl-Alt-Fn-F1 doesn't seem to do anything but Ctrl-Alt-Fn-F2 seems to turn my fan off :-)
GiH over 14 years

honestly i think its better for you to post this in the ubuntu forums, easier for the back and forth. Here is a downgrade howto help.ubuntu.com/community/DowngradeHowto
Daniel E. Renfer about 14 years

I am having this same issue. What version of the nvidia driver did you end up using?
Douglas Bodden about 14 years

NVIDIA accelerated graphics driver (version 173)