[GRLUG] IBM NetVista not booting graphical environment

[Rick Vargo]

Try going into the BIOS setup and enabling the onboard card.  Then see
if you cannot run through setup with the monitor hooked to it.  This may
be something where setup is seeing the onboard card as the primary even
though it is disabled in the BIOS setup.  Once you get it up and running
and confirm the NVIDIA card is working then you can try disabling it again.

Rick


john-thomas richards wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 20, 2007 at 03:22:28PM -0500, Rick Vargo wrote:
>   
>> john-thomas richards wrote:
>>     
>>> I am helping a friend with his non-profit's computer (he runs an inner-city
>>> ministry that helps with job placement, tutoring for students, leadership
>>> development, etc.).  The machine is an IBM NetVista, Pentium III processor,
>>> and an nVidia card.  I attempted to install XP (he *needs* Quickbooks) for
>>> him.  The install works fine until the machine reboots and attempts to load
>>> the GUI.  When it does so, the monitor goes into sleep mode and requires a
>>> hard reboot (the keyboard becomes unresponsive).  I thought this was odd
>>> behavior so I got another *identical* machine (literally; he received a
>>> donation of several identical machines from a local business) and tried
>>> installing XP onto that blank drive (after formatting, of course).  Again the
>>> monitor went into sleep mode.  I then booted the machine with a Knoppix CD.
>>> The initial splash screen (complete with graphic and a "boot:" prompt) comes
>>> up but when I type in "knoppix" to start Knoppix, the monitor again goes into
>>> sleep mode and requires a hard reboot.  The behavior is identical with XP and
>>> Knoppix on three machines.  I suspect it is an idiosyncracy with IBM hardware.
>>> Any suggestions?
>>>
>>>       
>> Does that computer happen to have two video cards (possibly an onboard
>> card and an AGP card)?
>>     
>
> It has onboard video and an AGP nVidia card.  I tried swapping the nVidia
> card with an ATI card and got the same response.  I also tried the onboard
> video.  It is quite bizarre.
>