Ubuntu installation on nvidia computer

August 9, 2011 at 6:20 pm Leave a comment

My harddrive died recently and so I reinstalled ubuntu. I got fed up with new release breaking tiny things often. So I tried to stick with LTS this time (10.04 when I wrote this).

I have an NVidia graphic card and dual monitor. I recalled troubles already from my previous experience of installing Ubuntu. I was sorry that I didn’t drop down some notes. This would have saved me lots of time.

First, desktop installation CD doesn’t work because of the video driver problem. It actually can’t even boot to the installation screen (more video problem discussion later on).

So I tried the alternate CD. But somehow ubuntu kept complaining the disk was bad. Even though it passed the integrity test. After wasting two disks, I decide to use USB installation instead.

USB installation is okay. But then I still have problem with the video driver. The system was “frozen” (I could moved my mouse) after I tried to login. I finally was able to get into Gnome through failsafe graphic mode (select recovery in Grub and then failsafeX in recovery menu). After get into Gnome, pick Hardware Drivers from Administration. After activating NVidia driver, I finally was able to get into Gnome in normal mode.