nVidia driver problem?

[hellrazor]

OK, I turned on the craputer today and started Mint 9 up and was greeted by a grey box with an error message saying that it couldn't start the nVidia kernel, some crap about having screens but none with a useable configuration, and other randomish crap.

I've had this problem on previous installations of Mint 9, and I've fixed them before, but this time it took a while for it to come up (as in everything was fine a couple of weeks ago), so I fixed it in my hillbilly style (blacklisted crap, reinstalled nVidia drivers). Then I updated my kernel to 2.6.32-24 (I don't know why it wasn't there before), and it magically popped up again. I could fix it (reinstall the drivers again), but I'd prefer if there was something a little more permanent.


On another note, if I drop to a terminal and run startx everything is perfect. No errors, it uses the drivers, everything runs fine.

[Hybrid_theory]

I havent tried mint for a few years now. With that said I havent run into this issue on ubuntu 10 with my nvidia workstation at work or my laptop at home. Maybe try another os in a dualboot if u can

[hellrazor]

Well, I never had this problem with Lubuntu (it got wiped by Winblows) and I believe that they both used the same driver version...

IDK....

[Hybrid_theory]

Yeah but it could be something in Mint thats causing the problem.

[hellrazor]

That's what I was figuring, but where exactly would I start? I blacklisted Noveau and a few buffers (?) as per the instructions on the bottom post (seemed easier to follow) of this.

My curiosity seems to lead me to "screens found, but none have a usable configuration" first and I start t think that the driver screen config gets out of sync with the X screen config, which might have been confirmed when it did it this morning and I started in low graphics mode and went to the nVidia X Server settings and it told me to run nvidia-xconfig as root, which I did, and when I rebooted everything was fine (which wouldn't happen before blacklisted junk, I tried). Maybe the configs would get out of sync, then the Noveau and stuff would... prevent it from reconfiguring things right..... and with the junk blacklisted it can reconfigure it no prob.

I honestly have no clue though.

BTW I'll be leaving on vacation tomorrow (Wednesday) and I won't be back 'til the end of next week - and I'm not bringing the computer, because then it wouldn't be a vacation :P .