[SOLVED] Problems after installing nvidia driver

[Arles]

Hello,

I've searched the forum but only 2 topic came up with keywword nvidia and none of them helps me to solve my problem. I have Sparky 3.6 mate x64 installed. It's a fresh install, the system is set up and it's working great, the only thing that I can see as a problem is refresh rate when watching videos. So i decided to install nvidia drivers. I have Dell Inspiron 17R laptop with Geforce GT525M graphics card. I installed drivers by following these instructions --> https://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers

I used $ nvidia-detect to see which drivers are recommended, then I used apt-get "package" and installed what was suggested. After the install I did this

# mkdir /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d
# echo -e 'Section "Device"\n\tIdentifier "My GPU"\n\tDriver "nvidia"\nEndSection' > /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-nvidia.conf

And everyting seemed fine until the first restart. The Grub gives me the ususal choice, when I boot the default sparky installation the screens hangs, all I can see is black screen with blinking cursor in upper left corner. And nothing happens. When I try to boot in recovery it hangs in the middle of boot. So I'm not able to do anything. How can I fix this, or remove nvidia drivers and use nouveau? 

Any advice will be appreciated.

[GeneC]

Hi Arles

Just now saw your post.
Yes, installing Nvidia the 'Debian way" can be less than sucessful.. :-[

Pavroo has given you an easy way.  I guess you dont have it installed or did not see it.

Go to synaptic and install 'ddm' (Device Driver Manager).  Its a tool to install drivers.

Device driver manager

Device Driver Manager is a tool to help users installing third-party hardware drivers.
Currently Nvidia, ATI and Broadcom drivers can be installed and allows to install the PAE kernel for multi-core 32-bit systems.

You MAY have to remove all traces of whatever you previously installed (all nvidia.?).  Not sure on that...

[Arles]

Hi,

I had to format the whole disk and reinstall sparky. I finally have everything setup and now I'll try once again as you suggested. In case somethning goes wrong, how can I revert the proces because I don't want to format everything again. ?

[GeneC]

Always best to make a full backup before making big changes... ;)
Clonezilla is one of the best options..
http://clonezilla.org/

A bit tedious on first use, but its 2nd nature in time, and MORE than worth it.  It takes a image of your OS and return it to EXACTLY where it was before... ;)
Re-install takes all of 5 minutes or less with Clonezilla.

That said DDM does work nicely.  If you want to insure feedback from it run it from a command line, and note output.  I dont use it myself (I prefer the most recent Nvidia drivers, and use SMXI, that is another tale all together and MORE complicated... ;)..).  Best to try DDM first..
If I remember correctly it does take a good amount of time, so be patient, and dont exit early...

[Arles]

Thank you for the info. I did make a clone backup of my whole partition with Acronis true image. I decided to take a chance with DDM, but I haven't been able to start it, so I tried ddm --force from terminal and it worked. It suggested the nvidia driver but when trying to click on install nothing happened. So I entered install-nvidia in terminal and that worked. It took some time, I rebooted and everything works. How can I check if I'm using nvidia driver ?

I noticed another thing, there is no sound. Alsa and pulse audio checked, nothing is on mute. I tried with audio and video files and no luck. Adding the actual user to audio group did not do the trick. Any suggestions?

Thanks

EDIT: solved the problem, just reconfigured the alsamixer,and I have found Nvidia X server settings in Administration. That solved my other problem.