6xxx doesn't work anymore in linux, while in windows it is fine

at home i have to switch from XP to linux (debian sid, for what is
worth) on the same PC, on both OS i use NVIDIA's drivers

yesterday evening i unhappily put XP on sleep when i intended to
switch off my computer (it was the first time in my life that i used
that feature of windows)

when i switched on the PC to be able to definitively turn it off, the
screen went dark gray, the system was frozen and i had to do an hard
switch of the electric current

after this accident, linux has not been able to turn on the graphical
nodes of my nvidia card (dark gray screen, frozen system exactly as
above) while windows has no problems at all

after the 1st failure (->switchoff) in order, i tried the following

1. recompile and reinstall and use the "nvidia" driver,
2. use the "nv" driver,
3. use the "noveau" driver,
4. start windows, get the graphical screen and hard switch the
electricity, restart with linux
5. take the time to write to you... there is something i could do? or
i have to change my video card?

1 to 4 gave me no joy, i have still a little hope for #5...

thanks in advance (ask for further details as you see fit)

ciao
g

Rene <> writes:

> Try a live bootable Linux CD and see if that works, i.e. boots into a
> graphical screen.

i received the same advice from different sources, i have to try it :-)

> It is a strange story. Do not really see how what happened may have
> caused this.

strange i say too! my guess is that xp put something in non-volatile
storage on my card while preparing for sleep mode...

> [...] Perhaps windows has send some very weird data to the hd so that
> something on your Linux partition was damaged.

i tried 5 different drivers... nvidia, recompiled nvidia, nv, noveau and
vesa: xp should have a 12/10 sight to bork all this disk sectors and
nothing else!

> So I would try that live cd.

so i will do

> [...] Real damage to the card, which doesn't prevent if from working
> in windows seems highly unlikely to me.

unlikely it is

thank you for your advice and the words of comfort

g

On 10/11/2010 4:14 PM, wrote:
> Rene<> writes:
>
>> Try a live bootable Linux CD and see if that works, i.e. boots into a
>> graphical screen.
>
> i received the same advice from different sources, i have to try it :-)
>
>> It is a strange story. Do not really see how what happened may have
>> caused this.
>
> strange i say too! my guess is that xp put something in non-volatile
> storage on my card while preparing for sleep mode...
>
>> [...] Perhaps windows has send some very weird data to the hd so that
>> something on your Linux partition was damaged.
>
> i tried 5 different drivers... nvidia, recompiled nvidia, nv, noveau and
> vesa: xp should have a 12/10 sight to bork all this disk sectors and
> nothing else!
>
>> So I would try that live cd.
>
> so i will do
>
>> [...] Real damage to the card, which doesn't prevent if from working
>> in windows seems highly unlikely to me.
>
> unlikely it is
>
> thank you for your advice and the words of comfort
>
> g

This may be related to the behavior of some monitors/DVI ports as
described by Viewsonic tech support to me once. Apparently a DVI port
(on the video card) can go "dormant" if it does not establish a
connection with the monitor device or has some sort of hardware error.
This can be like a dead port; but another display or another port on the
card works just fine. You might find that if you simply switch to a
different display temporarily; it'll "come back to life".

You can also try a trick where you boot with two different display
connections to the same monitor; then switch between the two by
disconnecting one, and switch back by hot swapping to the original port.
This generally involves both DVI and VGA cable connected the card (vga
via adapter is ok), then swapping whichever port is still good for the
opposite.

This could all be unrelated; but it seems to me that DVI has memory of
sorts that is dependent on the device connected and I've seen many
threads over the years describing a similar solid color screen or no
display at all after the display failing to wake up. FWIW; perusing the
driver release notes for the past couple versions might reveal fixes for
drivers failing to resume on different models.

deimos <deimos@localhost> writes:

> This may be related to the behavior of some monitors/DVI ports as
> described by Viewsonic tech support to me once. Apparently a DVI port
> (on the video card) can go "dormant" if it does not establish a
> connection with the monitor device or has some sort of hardware
> error. This can be like a dead port; but another display or another
> port on the card works just fine.

i confess my ignorance: here i have a really old (and really fine
samsung CRT monitor connected to my GF6200 with a VGA cable, is it
possible that DVI "lock" plays a role in this?

> You might find that if you simply switch to a different display
> temporarily; it'll "come back to life".

i can try to connect my monitor with a VGA cable and DVI-VGA adapter, is
this what you are proposing?

> [...] This could all be unrelated; but it seems to me that DVI has
> memory of sorts that is dependent on the device connected and I've
> seen many threads over the years describing a similar solid color
> screen or no display at all after the display failing to wake
> up. [...]

oh well! do you know the italian saying "mal comune mezzo gaudio"?

thank you for your good advice, ciao
g