How do I do this....

[edcouch]

Hi again folks! It seems that the onboard video on my motherboard packed it in. So, I installed a PCI video card, but now when Ubuntu boots it stays in DOS and asks for the username then password. When I put these in, it then goes to a command prompt and I don't have any idea what to type in to get it to find my new video card and boot into the OS. Can anyone out there please tell me exactly what to type in that command line to get back using the OS.
Any help is much appreciated. I am new to Ubuntu and have resolved quite a few little issues but i still think it's a great OS.
Oh, the video card is: nvidia Geforce4 MX440 64MB DDR

Thanks in advance!

[cdnLilWolf]

First try "startx" after you have logged in. If that doesn't start X-windows, try "sudo /sbin/init 5". This is another way to get into runlevel 5 which is of course, graphical.

If neither of those work, try to run "sudo apt-get nvidia-glx". If the latter works, restart your PC. The only caveat is that I'm not 100% on the name of the nvidia package. You may need to re-install the restricted driver package as well.

Based on what I have read with these types of video issues, a fresh install is sometimes the wisest choice. If you kept /home on a separate partition, this should be relatively simple.

[edcouch]

Thanks for that reply Lilwolf, but nothing worked. I even tried to reinstall, but the whole system just hangs. Right now I am re-installing XP home which used to be on that machine, and it seems to be installing just fine. So I don't know what exactly happened here but I guess that's computers!!!

[cdnLilWolf]

Thanks for that reply Lilwolf, but nothing worked. I even tried to reinstall, but the whole system just hangs. Right now I am re-installing XP home which used to be on that machine, and it seems to be installing just fine. So I don't know what exactly happened here but I guess that's computers!!!

That's too bad. I will concede that one of the weaker points of Linux is the syncing of repository packages with kernel updates. I don't know if that's what happened to you, but it can cause a bit of grief to an unseasoned user and annoyance to those with more experience.

In your case I'm going to guess that the xorg.conf file got trashed after the install of your new video card. You didn't report any specific errors, but a hang on a fresh install is a bit perplexing for the video card in question. In hindsight, I believe Ubuntu has legacy drivers for your card and that is what we should have tried to install.

[linuxguru]

Too bad Ubuntu couldn't find the new card or at least boot to a generic vga screen. That would have allowed reconfiguring the video settings.

I installed a new PCI Express card on my Mandriva system and it rebooted to standard vga.

Don't give up on Ubuntu yet - you can set up dual boot with XP or use the windows version of VirtualBox and install Ubuntu under VirtualBox!

[Ken_ver_1_5]

not sure if this will help. in your bios check the video card setting
is not set to auto. set it to pci and no agp. had an install hang
with the auto setting but work with the pci setting. very strange.
this is assuming you have such settings in you bios.

[edcouch]

Thanks you for all your replies, I did try everything posted here and it just didn't work for me, so I am now reloading on a different machine. No I am not giving up on it, I just have to learn how to use it properly!

[Digiital]

In the BIOS see if you can turn off the video onboard. The other option when booting, make sure you boot in SAFE GRAPHICAL mode.