Newbie having issues after installing nvidia drivers

[supramp]

First of all, this is an old hand me down pc that i was given and decided to use it to learn on. its a dimension 2400 specs: Pentium 4 2.66ghz, 40gb hard drive, i upgraded to 2gb ram, geforce 8400 gs pci card because I needed the ram, and integrated video wasn't playing flash properly. I have it partitioned with windows xp sp3 and Kubuntu 13.04. about 20gb a piece minus 1gb swap. Xp is running fin with everything but kubuntu is kicking my ...

After a few days of trying to get the graphics card to work on kubuntu, I managed to install it threw the terminal. I have performed:
~update
~upgrade
~nvidia-current
~nvidia-settings
(xorg ppa repository) I don't remember the actual string

Well after I restarted it, I received a kde daemon crash upon start up, no keyboard response, no wifi recognition, and all open windows dock in the top-left corner. they cant be moved, and also have no min/max/close border.
I went into kubuntu advanced option via boot screen and chose the repair option. that seems to have gotten my wifi and keyboard back, but the kde crash and the window problem persists. When I look at the details, I feel like a 5th grader looking at Egyptian hieroglyphics.

I am a complete newb. I had a little time with ubuntu 11.04 on my old laptop and i had it running smooth with a lot of add-on programs , but the motherboard crapped out. I vaguely remember how to install deb packages, and run basic terminal commands, but that's it. I tried to search for a solution, which is how I usually resolve my problems, but I haven't had any luck. The few threads I have found, I couldn't understand.

I want to learn enough to use linux confidently, because I hate Microsoft, but Im proficient in windows and am getting discouraged. Please help me. And break it down "barney style" for me. If I have to run a log or something, just tell me how and I will post it. Thank you

[Snowhog]

Welcome to Kubuntu Forums . Net.

Let's see if we can fix the situation. Reboot and boot into Kubuntu. When you are at the login screen, press Ctrl+Alt+F1. This will take you to a console login. Enter your username and press Enter. Enter your password and press Enter.

Then type:

sudo apt-get update

Press Enter. When that finishes, type:

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Press Enter. You should get a big list of packages that can be updated/installed. At the end of the list you will be asked if you want to continue. The default is Yes, so press Enter. This may take a while to finish. You'll know when it has. When it has finished, type:

sudo shutdown -r now

This performs a shutdown of the operating system and then reboots your PC. Select Kubuntu and login normally. Any difference?

[tek_heretik]

Hi supramp, I briefly had to use an old computer similar to your situation, I found Kubuntu just a little too needy hardware wise so I had to temporarily use something else (search Old Computers at Distrowatch), I'm not discouraging you from this distro, I love it but it's not a very good fit for aging hardware. There are other distros with 'lighter' desktop environments that will function much better. Here is a list of nVidia drivers on their website, click around and find one the best suited to the GPU on your PCI card, match that same legacy driver version to the one in the repository and install it from the repository, trust me, it's way easier than installing nVidia's driver package.

[supramp]

Snowhog~ I am going to give it a try first. and I will let you know if it help.

tek_heretik~ I know exactly what your saying. it is a little heavy for an old Pentium 4 but, i wanted to give it a try. I figured KDE would be a little lighter then gnome, and still have the 3d environement. Im not using this computer for much more than a doc reader and basic web browser. I thknk the most gpu usage needed will be watching YouTube videos lol. Plus KDE is the one I wanted to learn on. I'm building a rig running 990FXA with a AMD FX-8350 to dual-boot windows 7 and a linux distro, so it will be able to handle anything. I probably should have gone with a XFCE, but I didnt like the distros at first glance, maybe if all else fails I might try Xubuntu, but I'm going to try and stick this out for now. In regards to what you said about it being easier to install straight from the repository, how would I go about doing that. The version I would need would be 319.60. How would I go about installing that from t he repository, and would I have to remove the nvidia files I have already installed?

Edit: So I tried what you said snowhog but heres what happen. The first time I hit Ctrl+Alt+F1 my screen went black, and then to "no signal". So I restarted, and changed my BIOS to run off of the integrated video card. then after boot I went into Ctrl+Alt+F1 and was somewhere toward the end of "sudo apt-get dist-upgrade" (or finished, I wasnt looking) when the screen went to no signal. After a minute or so it was rebooting. When it was loaded, the problems were still their and my keyboard wasnt responding again. and i still get the kde crash error, I cant copy the log because my keyboard isnt working and now im on my other computer. i will look into it more tomorrow. whats the next step guys.

[tek_heretik]

@supramp...I use Synaptic, I don't know if you know what it is or ever used it, it's an old school GUI package manager, search "nvidia" and you'll see all the different versions in the list, and yes, it would probably be better to uninstall the current driver first. That video driver tool (in Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Mint, etc etc etc) is very confusing, you are presented with a list of drivers, sometimes the "recommended" isn't the best fit, it's too new. Now that I read your first post again, I see you used "current", hmmm.

I'm too lazy for all that code, lol...in Synaptic search nvidia, click on the current installed driver (the box beside it in the list will be green), select 'Mark for Complete Removal', reboot, re-open Synaptic, search nvidia, install selected driver, reboot again.

Edit: FWIW, this same bologna happens in WinDOHS too, a slightly wrong driver for any hardware can cause the most dumbest problems.

sudo apt-get install synaptic

[supramp]

Sounds good Tek. I will give it a try, and let you know.

[supramp]

ok, i downloaded synaptic, used it to remove the current nvidia driver. restarted. now i need version 319.60 from what i can see on that list. so do i download Nvidia-319 from synaptic? are their different 319's because i see more than one?

[tek_heretik]

Click the supported products tab here, there should be a 319.x driver in the repository, an older one may work better, experiment. You are running 32-bit, make sure it's the 32-bit (x86) driver.

Edit: I do now remember not using the nvidia driver during my brief use of my 'beater' machine, because I found the one in Linux did the job and the nVidia driver made the already bogged down P4 work even harder.

[supramp]

ok, well when i tried to install the nvidia 319 driver, it also installed the 331 driver. after reboot, i switched the gpu in the bios and got a black screen and then no signal upon startup. GRRRRR. I have also heard that the linux driver ("novaeux?") is better. How do i get that one, after i remove all the nvidia drivers from my machine? or any other suggestions.

[tek_heretik]

Yeah, I would 'purge' anything nVidia, the generic Ubuntu/Kubuntu Linux display driver package name is xserver-xorg-video-nouveau, copy and paste that in to the search to find it faster. I may revert back to Nouveau automatically after removing everything nVidia.

WattOS is fairly light on aging hardware, that was what I used briefly, but go with their main LXDE desktop environment, I find the distro's default DE is always the best, WattOS is based on Ubuntu and Debian too.

WattOS on Distrowatch

List of aging computer friendly distros on Distrowatch

Here's a huge tip, try any distro 'live' first, and I mean thoroughly, do what you normally do, of course it will be slower because it's running from the optical drive but it's a good way to see if it 'likes' your system before installing.

[Teunis]

It is not a given nouveau would be more suited for older hardware.
The preferred way to install nVidia drivers is through the Jockey application, it should be on your computer.

What is pretty much certain is you want to switch off (3D) desktop effects, you can toggle it by simply pressing Alt+Shift+F12.

Synaptic is arguably the most complete GUI package manager around, KDE's Muon is not far behind, it should already be installed.

Success!

[tek_heretik]

The preferred way to install nVidia drivers is through the Jockey application, it should be on your computer.

That's part of the problem, it's too ambiguous and suggests the most bloated and new driver better suited for newer GPUs/cards, his card is PCI with "geforce 8400 gs" on board.

But I totally agree about the GUI bling (3D, etc), good suggestion.

[Teunis]

At least Jockey's suggestions are compatible and dependencies needed to build the module are well taken care of.
Because there is even a CLI version it is nearly always possible to revert to a different version of the driver.

[ronw]

Having panned Additional Drivers (which I think is just the GUI frontend to jockey) in the past, I'll give it credit now.

After the nouveau driver started causing GPU lockups a few days ago, I used Additional Drivers to install Nvidia 313-updates. That left weird artifacts on the screen after restarting, so I used Additional Drivers again to install 304-updates. It uninstalled the 313 driver, installed 304 properly, and has been working since.

[supramp]

ok, so I removed the nvidia drivers, and im going to try the nouveau driver the TEK recommended first. as for the distro. kubuntu was working great until i tried to install drivers for the geforce 8400 PCI. thats when things went wonky. through out this whole thing. my windows are still locked in the top left corner, with no min/max/ close option. and chromium and firefox wont go fullscreen