On Tue, 10 Dec 2002, flacycads wrote: > First, some background: > I recently changed my motherboard from a dead Shuttle AK31A to a KX7-333 on a > dual boot win98SE and Mandrake 9.0 box. Everything worked exactly as before- > perfectly, except win98 would hang up on connecting to the internet. I solved > that by upgrading the win98 nvidia drivers from 1290's to 3032's- all was > fine again both win98 and Linux worked perfectly. Two weeks later, I > replaced my 32MB original GeForce2 mx video card with a GeForce2 mx400 64MB > card. No driver changes, and all worked perfectly. Now to the problem:
> > After trying and failing to install the Linux nvidia drivers from nvidia many > times (following instructions to the letter), I could never get beyond the > logo appearing at boot, and then my system freezing up trying to start X. I > finally figured out that the driver install was deleting my > /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 file. Even reinstalling Mandrake always resulted in > the same thing, and I never figured it out. I went back to a fresh Drake > install with generic drivers, which don't provide 3d acceleration. I've given > up on the Linux nvidia drivers for now- neither tar, rpm's, or rebuilding > source rpms work on my main system, or my test system either. Is the entire machine hanging or just X? If X goes down it may appear to be hung because your mouse/keyboard are locked up. Do you have a machine that you can connect from remotely? Take a look in the XFree86 log file in /var/log. If you're lucky then there may be useful troubleshooting information in there such as what got loaded right before the crash. One thing I've found is that NVidia drivers don't play well with framebuffer consoles. Try disabling them if they're on. > > Now the remaining problem: Since trying the nvidia linux install, win98SE will > not boot to anything but safe mode. I'm a windows expert, and have tried > everything, short of a reinstall, which I have concluded is the only > solution. I've done all windows and KX7drivers removal/reinstalls, many > different nvidia drivers known to work before, and all possible windows > troubleshooting techniques, bios settings, boot logs, nvidia "detonator > destroyer" to remove all traces of old drivers, etc. All drivers are > installed correctly, but no luck. Trying to open the nvidia control panel or > change the video settings in safe mode gives a black screen, and locked > computer. Trying to boot normally with all drivers freezes the machine. This is OT for this list, but I'll add a couple notes: Windows 98 does not handle switching motherboards very well. Are you using the latest drivers from the manufacturers site or the ones from the motherboard CD? If you're coldbooting the machine there's nothing from the Linux side that will affect the Windows installation (unless you have some sort of partitioning problem). I've seen NVidia cards not reset themselves properly but cold-boots will clear it. Try doing a confirmed startup of Win98 and step through each setting. Remove all other cards except the video card and try booting. Disable USB, onboard video, sound and test reboots with each. It could be a hardware conflict. Do you have a dedicated IRQ for your video? Are there any other cards in the machine? > > Bottom line is the Linux nvidia install mess I experienced has somehow > corrupted the windows display to the extent I can't boot to anything but safe > mode, and I must reinstall win98SE to to my C partition. Any other ideas are > welcome, but it seems my only recourse. Again, the Linux install is completely separate from the Windows portion. Unless you were changing stuff on a mounted Win98 disk, there's nothing that Linux can do to the Winders installation. > > My Linux question: When I reinstall windowsSE on a dual boot Linux box, will > that overwrite my Linux MBR, and what should I do to prevent, or correct > that? Or, will I have to reinstall Mandrake 9.0 after I reinstall windows 98 > to get the original lilo mbr reinstalled? Is there a simple procedure for > copying the lilo config file, and then replacing the new win98 mbr with lilo? > I'm not a linux expert, and am unclear on this. You need to install Windows first, then re-install your bootloader. There's no way to prevent Windows from over-writing it. Reinstalling the bootloader is as simple as booting from a rescue disk such as the Mandrake CD, mounting your Linux partitions, chrooting to the root of the linux partition, then rerunning LILO (it's harder to type than do). You don't need to reinstall Linux.
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