Stupid Newbie Disaster

[Thomas Kaiser (ubuntu)]

Hello John

John W Redelfs wrote:
> I didn't realize that I must still be a newbie until last night when I 
> totally screwed up.  I was trying to install nVidia drivers for my dual 
> boot system, when my machine seemed to hang during the shutdown of 
> X-windows.  Instead of waiting a bit longer, like an idiot I did a 
> Clt-Alt-Delete, and that started a warm reboot.  But now my X-windows 
> seems to be damaged, and I can't get back onto Breezy Badger's desktop.
Some more info on this would be helpful. How did you try to install your 
nVidia driver. And is it the official nVidia driver from nVidia? I had 
never problems with it, I just have to reinstall it after a kernel 
update (or I tried my self compiled kernel :-) )
> Working from the command line outside of X-windows, nothing works to get 
> X-windows running again.  As a last resort, I tried using my new Breezy 
> Badger install disc made from the ISO I downloaded a few nights ago with 
> the intentions of doing a reinstall and starting all over again.  But 
> the install won't boot from the CD anymore, and I keep getting grub back 
> in my face instead of the install program.
This sounds like a bad cd. If your BIOS is setup to boot from CD at the 
first place, it will do it when it can read the media.

> Now what in tarnation should 
> I do?  I suppose I could apt-get a new X-windows if I wasn't so ignorant 
> about apt-get and the Debian stuff.  But I don't even know how to do 
> that.  What is wrong with my Breezy Badger install disk?  I know my BIOS 
> is set up to boot first from the CD-ROM, secondly from my floppy drive, 
> and only last of all from the hard drive which is where my grub is set 
> up in the Master Boot Record.
See my quote above.

> I had an easier time installing my first 
> Red Hat installation back in 1995 when I had to set up my partitions 
> using fdisk without a partitioning program.
So, you should be used to the command line :-)

> Ubuntu is proving to be a 
> much bigger problem to set up than I imagined it would be.
Is it Ubunutu or you ?

> The Live CD 
> worked so nicely.  It seems to me that there needs to be a lot of work 
> done on making video drivers install more easily with the initial 
> installation or at least afterwards.  I never had any of these problems 
> setting up my new Windows XP with the appropriate nVidia drivers.
> 
> Sorry for the blast.  I'm just frustrated and feeling stupid.  Back to 
> the newbie forum I guess.
There is the big problem that most of the hardware manufacture don't 
support Linux and most of the good Linux driver are done with 
reengineering, which is a very hard job (thanks to all out there writing 
Linux drivers). BTW. I was working on a webcam these days, almost no 
information from the manufacturer (Pixart), but now we got it working -> 
reengineering the windows driver).

So, now back to your problem. What happens if you start (boot) your PC. 
Does it try to start X and tell you after that it can't do it and your 
are back in the command line?

If so, You just have the wrong nVidia driver for your kernel. I had this 
several times in the past, because I did some stupied things :-)

Regards, Thomas

-- 
http://www.kaiser-linux.li