On 23/08/14 18:46, Daniel J Jitnah wrote:
On 23/08/14 17:52, Robert Moonen wrote:
On 23/08/14 10:13, Brian May wrote:
Hello,

Am having two strange problems that are starting to eerk me with this (relatively new) computer, running Debian wheezy:


1. If I boot anything later then 3.12 kernel, I don't get any display. As in the monitors display black. No cursors of any sort. Changing to a virtual console doesn't help. Booting in rescue mode doesn't help (I think this rules out X-Windows being a problem). If I go back to the 3.12 kernel, everything works perfectly. I also tried plugging monitors into alternative ports just in case it is going to the wrong place, but get nothing - in any case, under 3.12 the computer seems pretty good at automatically working out what ports are active under X-Windows.

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation G96 [GeForce 9500 GT] (rev a1)

Am currently using the non-free nvidia drivers. Had exactly the same symptoms when I installed the latest kernel without the non-free nvidia kernel modules. I think the problem is occurring before X starts.

I had a similar problem with a rather old and  *different* Nvidia card to yours and a late kernel (I think its 3.13 onwards?).  As I understand the changes in the latest kernel breaks the Nvidia driver, and for my card at least, Nvidia will not update their driver, as my card is quite old.  Not sure, but could be yours is similarly affected? There are patches, you supposedly can apply to the kernel source, but thats ugly, and I tried that without success. :(.. - I did not struggle a lot with it and gave up. (Reason I have not upgraded to latest kernel.)   Wheezy here as well.  - In fact it appeared for me in Jessie and Ubuntu 14.04. 

Cheers
Daniel

I and my daughter have had problems especially with Ubuntu me using standard install video drivers and she Nvidia driver. I'm thinking, the way Linux 3.nn core handles video of late is worse that I can remember.
There were a number of video problems then Ubuntu would not display menus and eventually there was literally no easy way to even log in.
In desperation I used the trial live usb system and saved some of my files to an external usb hd but on the next boot the whole thing failed.
I did a fresh install of ubuntu to test whether the computer, mb, memory or ssd was faulty and am still testing,  so far it's all ok but after 2 failures in a week I am most uncomfortable.
Oh! and before I get told off for not discussing Fedora, my ADSL is running at 0.1 to at best 30 Kb/sec for weeks now so downloading the Fedora 20 live was going to take 2 days not counting times when it shuts off for hours at a time. I used what I had.
I'm thinking there is a fault somewhere in core linux and this may also affect Nvidia drivers because every program or app I used had faults and display errors and eventually the top bar  with X - and [] for close, minimise and enlarge disappeared. Thunderbird and LiberOffice had lines of text missing, cut in half or doubled and the list goes on.
Roger