Nvidia 8600gt 512 card drivers and freezes

Kev (if that's your name...) I had the same problem
I hate to say this but the only thing you can do is get a new computer....
Sorry if any one has a answer please help us....

Mate.... I just spent $$ on this machine 3 weeks ago.... My old one was a P4 with good specs but motherboard played up so bought a new one
Core2 duo 3Ghz, ( E6850 chip) 3gig ram and this video card... I use it for drafting with ... dare I say it ... XP... my old machine had a Nvidia Geforce Fx5700Ve and that also had stability issues....
perhaps someone could advise when the last stable driver was and I will use it... It seems that there are quite a few of us with this card that have trouble... There must be a solution somewhere... I do not like to delve in the guts of files though.. like editing this and that to get the solution unless it is foolproof. Me being the fool. Jai Mu you say had the problem... what video card did you land up getting then to rectify the problem?
Thanks for taking the time to answer by the way....
cheers for now Kev (Kevin)

hi kev,
regarding the (unnessecary) cold start please check this:
http://www.brunolinux.com/01-First_Things_To_Know/Skinny_Elephants.html

to turn on 3d acceleration you normally dont need to download any drivers you can go to
system, system administrations, restricted drivers and there under driver you turn on "accelerated nvidia driver".
i dont know what graphic driver you use but i recommend you to give the driver "nvidia-glx-new" a try.
search for it in synaptic.
all right?

thanks Jonas, will the keystrokes still work if it appears that the keyboard is locked ( even when the numlock light does not changed when pressed)
now the restricted drivers in system, system administrations, restricted drivers, I have looked for this option and cannot see it, otherwise I might have tried it, even when I go to preferences, main menu and look for the box to tick to activate a menu item I do not see " restricted drivers" as a menu option? am I missing something?

ok restricted drivers in Hardy is system... admin... hardware drivers

Hello

You can compile the latest drivers from nvidia according to the steps here

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/NvidiaManual

Or you can install envy

If you have a nvdia card then:

Enable universe repos first

Refer:

http://psychocats.net/ubuntu/sources

then type in a terminal:

sudo apt-get install envyng-gtk
sudo apt-get install nvidia-settings
envyng -t

then to do settings

sudo nvidia-settings

Regards

thanks once again Bhavani Shankar... will play with the settings tomorrow, just one question the monitor detect in nvidia-settings says this viewsonic VG700b-2 (crt-1 on gpu-0)
my screen is a lcd (actual model is VG700b)is the crt-1 an old style cathode ray tube?
your knowledge is phenomenal... be patient with us learners....
will close this question in 2 to 3 days if this works ... many thanks
Kev

:) Thanks mate try out and please report back in case of problems

good morning Bhavani Shankar, had a go at the above mentioned envy options but as soon as my system was up and running it froze, the http://www.brunolinux.com/01-First_Things_To_Know/Skinny_Elephants.html worked each time....
What I see just before it locks up is a flicker on the screen, then it's all over this happens about 1 min from when the herron desktop picture shows up. I had to go in on recovery node ant got the x org something to reconfigure ..... now stable but no compiz stuff.... may be I should try without compiz on and see if it is the video drivers or the eye candy thta's causing my lockups... will try that ... chat soon

hi again... so far the envy method works well no lockups but as soon as I enable the eye candy on compiz it locks up soon after that..... so perhaps its not the drivers but the incompatibility of compiz with this driver.... doing the settings in advance desktop effects... so in stead if compiz.. is there another option for eye candy on ubuntu hardy? Does emerad need to be installed with compiz?

Hi Bhavani Shanka, I have decided to leave the eye candy stuff alone for now again... ( compiz-fusion) could you please show me how to completely remove all its bits.. so I am not tempted to play with it again. I looked in the synaptic package manager and there is a lot of files that carry that name or part there of, last time I tried something like this for firefox I destroyed my system and had to start again... is there a terminal sudo command to purge them. I will mark this solved very soon.

OK mate Its working and its great! Linux programs are designed to " Just work " LOL...:)

Simple mate in general

regarding how to remove stuff with aptitude:

to find packages use:

aptitude search yyy

and to remove a package:

aptitude remove yyy

or to install a package:

aptitude install yyy

In your case its compiz..:)

and another note:

Please turn off the desktop effects before purging

System > preferences > appearance under the visual effects tab set it to none..

Regards

thanks again Bhavani Shanka,
I have to have the desktop effects off any way because of the lockups. Up to date driver is stable BUT still not stable with compiz or other desktop effects. perhaps that will be another question at a later date.
Regarding the compiz removal... great info but I needed the sudo to sudo aptitude remove compiz, I do however still see some of the files in synaptic package manager with green block meaning it is installed, compiz-core, compizcomfig-backens-gconf, the plugins and extra plugins, compiz gnome, libdecoration.... is it safe to do a synaptic package manager total removal of theses files.... I am nervous about this type of thing as one wrong file gone and ... system stuffed... I have been there before... this question is almost closed.... if you could just make comment regarding this bit I will close the question today... once again many thanks and thank you for your patience.. kind regards your "mate" kev ( from down under)

found this site to see how to purge my system of compiz files... seemed to work so I will close this question... once again many thanks
http://www.ubuntugeek.com/howto-remove-compiz-fusion-including-config-files.html

Sorry all that are looking at this... my system is still unstable using the envy nvidia drivers... I have had 2 lockups in the last hour... my core temperature for my cad is 42 - 44degress cellceous, I get a flicker.. then all freezes so will get rid of the nvidia drivers and go back to what I had before this all started.... BOOHOOOO !!!!

hi al I found http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux_display_ia32_173.14.09.html
 Download - NVIDIA-Linux-x86-173.14.09.pkg1.run, seems a new driver so might give it a try... but how would I run the install, the command they give does not work
STEP 3: Install
Type "sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-173.14.09-pkg1.run" to install the drive

To all nvidia 8 +9 card users.... this site has some bad news for us.... http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=f36f5db479b1981c74c11292d9e9c933&t=115916
I was beginning to think I had a dud card.... I might even stick my old FX7500 card back in to my new PC

Hi all & Bhavani Shanka
Some good news...after taking my 3 week old PC back to the shop and 3 days of stress testing they admitted that a ram module on the card was stuffed... so was replaced...then I got home and all excited to test it out found the my keyboard was not responding... swapped with another one and same deal... returned to shop for a rebuild... so a new motherboard and card... so far so good. the compiz effects have not frozen my system .... before I took my PC in I had installed the new 173.14.09 driver with envy so far so good... SO once again not a ubuntu fault but a hardware issue... so I will call this solved by hook or crook it has been sorted....