[Techtalk] nvidia mystery

[Michelle M]

Hi all,

I upgraded my LCD monitor from an ancient 15" to a 22" widescreen, and I 
have been having all sorts of problems. I'm running Ubuntu Gutsy.

I suspect that it is because I never actually had the nVidia drivers 
installed properly, and since it didn't matter for my monitor, I never 
noticed it. Now that I need it, I'm running into trouble.

I have onboard video, an Asus motherboard, with this GeForce: nVidia 
Corporation C51PV [GeForce 6150]

I went and got the most recent version of the nvidia drivers 
(NVIDIA-Linux-x86-169.12-pkg1.run) I installed this, and had no errors. 
But I already had a bunch of nvidia packages installed. (See 
http://pearlbear.pastebin.com/m112517e9) I wonder if this was part of my 
mistake. I wonder if there is a conflict?

On startup, I get this:
(EE) NVIDIA(0): Failed to initialize the NVIDIA kernel module! Please ensure
(EE) NVIDIA(0):     that there is a supported NVIDIA GPU in this system, and
(EE) NVIDIA(0):     that the NVIDIA device files have been created 
properly.
(EE) NVIDIA(0):     Please consult the NVIDIA README for details.
(EE) NVIDIA(0):  *** Aborting ***

If I use an xorg.conf that uses the "nv" driver, instead of the "nvidia" 
driver, I get halfway passible video, but not what I need (max is 1240x720)

Googling around hasn't yeilded much, except maybe something with udev? 
Which I totally don't understand.

When I do a 'modprobe nvidia' I don't get any errors. Restarting X at 
that point is generally disasterous.

Anyway, any suggestions welcome. I'm stumped!

Peace,
Michelle
-- 
Michelle Murrain
michelle at murrain.net
http://www.murrain.net
Blog: http://www.metacentricities.com

Skype: pearlbear
AIM: pearlbear0