Weird nVidia card problem
#1
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.
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#2
have you put the card in another machine to verify it actually works?
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#3
No, I have to do that too. I also forgot to put one thing in the OP. No matter what values I used for the card in speaker-test, I could not get any sound to play. I tried hw and plughw 3,7,8, and 9 but got nothing. I picked up a pretty cheap GT210 to try if I see anything different. I probably won't be able to put the 430 into another machine for about a day or two.

The thing that really threw me was that XFCE and XBMC (launched from XFCE) would work but XBMC wouldn't when launched on it's own.

One question, should I just be able to put int the nVidia card, modprobe nvidia, and then have it work, since there's currently no xorg.conf loading the module?
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#4
not sure on that last part. i install the nvidia drivers manually so that i don't accidentally upgrade past 290.10.
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#5
Well, I threw in a cheap GT210 and saw the same behavior, kind of, as the 430. Upon first boot, I actually got 1024x768 out of it. The GUI was extremely slow and everything was kind of wonky. I dropped to a shell and performed a purge and reinstall of nvidia-current and nvidia-settings. After a reboot, nothing changed. The nvidia kernel module was not loading correctly. I also tried an install thumbdrive and CD, and saw the same behavior, i.e. everything would start out fine, but eventually I'd get the black screen.

So, I threw caution to the wind and booted back up. I downloaded the driver script from nVidia, removed nvidia-current and nvidia-settings, and had the script build the driver from scratch. That seemed to go well, but X wouldn't load. After a reboot, I got into XFCE and then into XBMC. I was able to get audio via plughw:1,7. I then took a chance, powered down and put the GT430 in. I'm now booted in to XBMC and getting ready to write my /etc/asound.conf file so I get UI sounds.

I guess I just have a weird motherboard.
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