Jeff wrote:
Kent West wrote:Jeff wrote:I am a new Debian user . Had Etch installed and tried to install the Nvidia driver without success. Now i cannot get the display working when i boot Etch ! Just a blank screen? Can someone tell me how to get the display back from boot up please?Try Ctrl-Alt-F1 to switch to Virtual Terminal 1 (VT1); if that works, you can make repairs from there. (I won't go into the repair process; let us know if you can get to this point.)If that doesn't work, does Crlt-Alt-Backspace do anything for you?If neither of those get you to a text-based VT, you'll have to boot into a "safer" mode; there are several ways to do this, but I'll wait to see if one of the above methods gets you farther along.No sadly those two methods did not work.
Let me encourage you to keep the responses on-list; this way, others can benefit from the (archived and on-going) conversation, and others who are more knowledgeable than I can toss in their two-cents.
I also should have mentioned Ctrl-Alt-plus-or-minus-on-the-numeric-keypad to try and change resolution, but if the first two methods didn't work, that's fairly indicative that the either the video system or the system as a whole is locked up.
I don't know anything about getting the proprietary Nvidia stuff going, but we should be able to get you back to SVGA or Debian's non-proprietary nv driver.
When you're at the grub prompt (LILO, perhaps, but doubtful), do you have an option for "safe" or "recovery" mode, or some-such? If so, choose it; if not, choose the option to change the boot parameters, and add the text "init=/bin/bash". Either of these cases will get you to a virtual terminal (assuming you haven't secured your box more than the default; if you have, you'll have to use a boot medium, such as the installation CD or a Knoppix LiveCD).
Once into a virtual terminal (the "init=/bin/bash" option will give you a bare minimum setup), you may have to mount relevant partitions (depending on how you partitioned your drive) so that you can get into the /etc/init.d directory. Once in that directory, you'll need to disable the automatic start-up of X by deactivating gdm or wdm or xdm or kdm (most likely gdm, then second likely kdm). If you see any of these files, edit them (using vi or nano) and add "exit 0" as the first non-comment line in the file. Save the file, and restart the computer. (There are other methods for doing the recovery, but this is probably the easiest to explain based on guesses about your setup.)
Once you reboot, you should have a normal, non-X environment. Now you can edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf (or run "dpkg-reconfigure xorg-server" (I believe)) and change the line that says something like "Driver 'NVidia'" to "Driver 'nv'" or "Driver 'svga'". After saving the file, test it with "startx". Once X is running again, you can reactive the automatic startup of X if you like by commenting out or removing the "exit 0" line(s) you made in "/etc/init.d/[xgwk]dm".
I know it seems complex, but you can do it. -- Kent