2012-07-02, 21:22
Right now I'm not sure if it's the card or my motherboard, but I'll describe what happened, hoping that maybe somebody has a clue.
My current HTPC setup is a Biostar TH61 mini-ITX motherboard coupled with an Intel i3 2100 CPU and a 64GB Crucial SSD. I've been using the IGP for video and the onboard sound through the HDMI connection as well.
I decided that I wanted to get around the Intel 23.976 fps bug in the Sandy Bridge chipset, so I picked up an PNY nVidia GT430 card. When I inserted the card and fired everything up the first time, the highest resolution I could achieve was 640x480, due mainly to xorg.conf not calling the nvidia driver. So I backed up my xorg.conf file and rebooted. Now X wouldn't load at all. I tried calling nvidia-xconfig, but got "command not found" every time I tried. I made sure nvidia-settings and nvidia-current were up to date, both were, but no love. I then tried purging and reinstalling both. The installations went okay, but X still would not launch, and nvidia-xconfig would not work. So I then removed both nvidia-current and nvidia-settings and downloaded the nVidia driver script straight from nVidia. I ran the script and it built the module and wrote a new xorg.conf.
When I rebooted, I could get into XFCE, but XBMC would not autoload. I could run XBMC from the WM, but if I tried logging out, it would just get a black screen. I also couldn't drop to a shell, Ctrl+Alt+<F1-F6> didn't do anything, I just remained at a black screen. So, I SSH'd into the box, backed up all my needed files and directories to another machine and thought I'd try a clean reinstall with the GT430 inserted. I made sure I disabled, as much as I could in the BIOS, the Intel IGP. I couldn't disable it completely, but I turned off as much as I could and set the BIOS to only initialize PEG and PCI graphics adapters at boot.
Everytime I tried booting to a Unetbootin created XBMCbuntu install thumbdrive, I'd get to the menu screen and could choose Install XBMCbuntu, but the screen would go black after making my choice. I also tried burning an install CD, but after booting to the CD, I'd get the same black screen. If I tried just running XBMC Live from the thumbdrive, I'd get text on the screen until Lightdm, or X, started to launch then the text would just stay on the screen. Again, sometimes I could drop to a shell, other times not. I searched around and found maybe the SSD was calling XBMC before other things had started, so I tried adding a delay in, but that didn't seem to make a difference. I tried reistalling GDM, but again, nothing.
So I pulled out the GT430 and reinstalled with just XBMC and the Intel IGP. Everything went smoothly with that, just what I expected. I didn't get a chance to configure anything past the base install last night, as it was getting pretty late. I might try connecting the nVidia card again to see if the problem persists. I might also see if I can pick up a cheap 9000 series or maybe a GT210 to see if I see the same problem.
Any ideas if there's anything else I should try or something else I should be looking at? As I said, I'll try another card to see if the problem repeats, if not, I'll return the GT430, if it does, I'm not sure how to proceed.
My current HTPC setup is a Biostar TH61 mini-ITX motherboard coupled with an Intel i3 2100 CPU and a 64GB Crucial SSD. I've been using the IGP for video and the onboard sound through the HDMI connection as well.
I decided that I wanted to get around the Intel 23.976 fps bug in the Sandy Bridge chipset, so I picked up an PNY nVidia GT430 card. When I inserted the card and fired everything up the first time, the highest resolution I could achieve was 640x480, due mainly to xorg.conf not calling the nvidia driver. So I backed up my xorg.conf file and rebooted. Now X wouldn't load at all. I tried calling nvidia-xconfig, but got "command not found" every time I tried. I made sure nvidia-settings and nvidia-current were up to date, both were, but no love. I then tried purging and reinstalling both. The installations went okay, but X still would not launch, and nvidia-xconfig would not work. So I then removed both nvidia-current and nvidia-settings and downloaded the nVidia driver script straight from nVidia. I ran the script and it built the module and wrote a new xorg.conf.
When I rebooted, I could get into XFCE, but XBMC would not autoload. I could run XBMC from the WM, but if I tried logging out, it would just get a black screen. I also couldn't drop to a shell, Ctrl+Alt+<F1-F6> didn't do anything, I just remained at a black screen. So, I SSH'd into the box, backed up all my needed files and directories to another machine and thought I'd try a clean reinstall with the GT430 inserted. I made sure I disabled, as much as I could in the BIOS, the Intel IGP. I couldn't disable it completely, but I turned off as much as I could and set the BIOS to only initialize PEG and PCI graphics adapters at boot.
Everytime I tried booting to a Unetbootin created XBMCbuntu install thumbdrive, I'd get to the menu screen and could choose Install XBMCbuntu, but the screen would go black after making my choice. I also tried burning an install CD, but after booting to the CD, I'd get the same black screen. If I tried just running XBMC Live from the thumbdrive, I'd get text on the screen until Lightdm, or X, started to launch then the text would just stay on the screen. Again, sometimes I could drop to a shell, other times not. I searched around and found maybe the SSD was calling XBMC before other things had started, so I tried adding a delay in, but that didn't seem to make a difference. I tried reistalling GDM, but again, nothing.
So I pulled out the GT430 and reinstalled with just XBMC and the Intel IGP. Everything went smoothly with that, just what I expected. I didn't get a chance to configure anything past the base install last night, as it was getting pretty late. I might try connecting the nVidia card again to see if the problem persists. I might also see if I can pick up a cheap 9000 series or maybe a GT210 to see if I see the same problem.
Any ideas if there's anything else I should try or something else I should be looking at? As I said, I'll try another card to see if the problem repeats, if not, I'll return the GT430, if it does, I'm not sure how to proceed.