Tag: Drivers

NVidia problems in Ubuntu 8.10

[updated, scroll down if you want to skip some nonsense] So, I did an upgrade to Ubuntu Studio 8.10 (basically Ubuntu with rt-kernel and lots of nice media-related packages easily accessible and a skin that rocks) from the earlier 8.04. And the upgrade itself was really easy. I just opened the “Software Sources”, set the  Release upgrade to Normal Releases (you find it under the Updates tab). After that you get the option to do a Distribution Upgrade, which I did (took some 45 minutes to finish). I did however run into some serious problems with the NVidia Drivers after the upgrade. Basically, the new drivers dont seem to install correctly under the new kernel. This conclusion took me a day of laborating with settings, installing packages, uninstalling packages, reinstalling packages and a whole lot of googling. What I have come down to right now is doing the following: sudo apt-get install module-assistant This will install the module assistant and it will also make sure that you have all the correct linux headers to install the NVidia drivers. Going back to the “Software Sources” under i check the “Unsopported updates”. Then i execute sudo apt-get autoremove sudo apt-get install nvidia-177-kernel-source m-a auto-install nvidia UPDATE! After fiddling around with this Laptop (Lenovo Thinkpad T61) I really just needed these three steps to fix the problem. All of them from X using the regular nv-drivers. In a terminal, run sudo apt-get install module assistant In a terminal, run sudo m-a auto-install nvidia Open the “Hardware Drivers” application and pick the driver you want (177 in my case) and click Activate. If it worked alright, you’ll get the green recycle icon and be asked to reboot to activate the settings. Hopefully, this might help someone. It did work for me and I am now able to work with wobbly windows and all that crap. (Besides some serious 3d stuff 😉 ) Anyway. Since I did not save the urls, I cannot give credit to those who have pointed to stuff that did help me on the way, but I’ve actually not find information anywhere yet that solve the problem totally and, well… that’s why I did decide to post in here.

Intel Drivers causes old-school freezes on Windows Vista

I recently got a nice new Lenovo ThinkPad T61 laptop at work to replace the old T42 I had earlier. Totally nice with 2,2GHz dual-core, Windows Vista and stuff. Now, there seems to be a problem with some drivers since I get the back-to-the-90s kinda lockups. You know were pretty much everything remotely interactive freeze. No BSOD, no crasches, no reboot. Just a plain freeze and all you can do is to press and hold the powerbutton until the computer powers off. Apparently, these problems are caused by some bug or something in the Intel Turbo Memory Driver and the Intel Matrix Storage Manager in combination with some power-save feature in Windows Vista called “Windows Hybrid Hard Disk Power Savings Mode”. (Christ! Whatever happened to abrevations? I think i want those back. “ITMD and IMSM with WHDDPSM causes hickups”… no… wait.) Aaaanyway. The people over at the forums of Notebookreview.com has experienced this and posted a guide with the appropriate links. Check it out at http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=160154&page=2 Cheers!

Silly Hibernation doo-doo on WinXP

I recently added another 500MB of RAM to my computer… and there was much rejoice. However, after a few days it started to behave erraticly when pressing the Fn+F12 combo (on a ThinkPad that means “Hibernate”). It simply refused to hibernate with the very intuitive error message “Insufficent System Resources Exist to Complete the API”. Anyway. Microsoft has a fix for it, and you don’t have to call them to get it anymore either. Just follow the link below. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/Q909095