Installed Nvidia, Now Linux won't boot (even rescue disk won't boot)

[lapenta]

Hello,

I installed the Nvidia linux driver on my Dell XPS 600 with Redhat 9 for the GeForce 7800 GTX. I followed the instructions and went into run-level 3, ran the install program, updated the xorg.conf, and then switched back into run-level 5. Everything appeared to work fine and the 1680x1050 resolution even worked great.

Then I rebooted. and the kernel hangs on

Initializing hardware... storage network audio

Even the rescue disks won't boot! I've tried passing the kernal boot params
pci=noacpi
bci=biosirq
noapic
acpi=off

with no luck.

I just want to get anything back! how can I remove this driver and at least boot a rescue disk? or is there some backup VGA mode so I can at least boot and get the driver off.

Thanks in advance,
Jason

[energyman76b]

Hi,

is there any command to turn off the automatic hardware detection?

[LubosD]

Try passing init=/bin/sh to kernel

and then do

mount -o remount,rw /

This is NOT a driver problem, this is your distribution's problem (probably).

[lapenta]

if this is not a driver issue, then why won't either the Redhat or Gentoo rescue disks boot?

[netllama]

The NVIDIA X driver isn't loaded until X is started. This problem sounds like an unfortunate coincidence.

Thanks,
Lonni

[lapenta]

Seems the problem is that I had the monitor USB cable pugged in. Removing that allowed it to boot. It was plugged in before installing the driver without any problem, so I'm perplexed.

But now I have another problem, I can't halt the system. The monitor goes blank and the computer hangs. I've tried selinux=0 and reinstalling the driver.. but no luck. Well I guess I can live with that for now :<

thanks,

[netllama]

Not being to cleanly shutdown is likely a BIOS/kernel (something in ACPI land) bug.