[SOLVED] Help installing nvidia graphics card

[kayvee]

I had to remove my existing NVIDIA graphics card and install an old GeForce 9500 GT card in my machine. Now, the system does not even boot. It fails with an inexplicable error about unsupported configuration of eno0. I see the following error message:

e1000e 0000:00:19.0 eno0: Unsupported Speed/Duplex configuration

I am able to boot into the recovery mode with rudimentary graphics but not much. I have installed nouveau drivers as well as nvidia-340 driver for this card without much help. When I try Ubuntu additional drivers I do not see any need for additional drivers.

I will be perfectly happy with nouveau drivers if I can get them to work. Please help.

Some more info from the machine after logging in to the recovery mode:

$ sudo inxi -a -xxx -G
Graphics: Device-1: NVIDIA G96C [GeForce 9500 GT] vendor: ZOTAC driver: N/A alternate: nvidiafb, nouveau, nvidia_drm, nvidia
bus-ID: 01:00.0 chip-ID: 10de:0640 class-ID: 0300
Display: server: X.Org 1.20.13 compositor: kwin_x11 driver: loaded: nouveau,vesa unloaded: fbdev,modesetting
alternate: nvidia display-ID: :0 screens: 1
Screen-1: 0 s-res: 1280x1024 s-dpi: 61 s-size: 533x302mm (21.0x11.9") s-diag: 613mm (24.1")
Monitor-1: default res: 1280x1024
OpenGL: renderer: llvmpipe (LLVM 12.0.1 128 bits) v: 4.5 Mesa 21.2.6 compat-v: 3.1 direct render: Yes

[kayvee]

Figured it out! Apparently I just had to remove all existing nvida drivers... I had nvidia-510 series drivers installed on that machine. After I purged them all out, I was able to boot without any issues.