I started by updating from opensuse 11.3 to 11.4.
once the installation completed and tried to reboot nothing happened, just a black screen and then it seemed to loop.
I did a fresh install a few times, and the same thing. but it would start up in failsafe or using nomodeset
So I thought maybe it’s my graphics driver. I installed nivida driver from opensuse website while in failsafe. rebooted and it would only go into text mode and ask for login. once I enter my details it says have fun and that’s it, it does this in normal boot, nomodeset and failsafe.
I dual boot with windows 7. and my card is nvida 9800gt can anyone help?
Note after a fresh install of openSUSe-11.4 with nVidia hardware, when you boot your PC, openSUSE will try to boot to the nouveau video driver. Of course if that fails, one will end up possibly with black or white screen.
If after a fresh install of openSUSE-11.4 with nVidia hardware, when you boot you then (having experienced the above) use the boot code ‘nomodeset’ openSUSE will than attempt to boot with the ‘nv’ video driver.
Note if you use ‘failsafe’ openSUSE will attempt to boot with the ‘fbdev’ video driver. If you use the boot code ‘x11failsafe’ openSUSE will also attempt to boot with the ‘fbdev’ video driver.
So, it reads like
after your initial install your PC failed to boot to the nouveau driver. Why ? I don’t know. Possibly you kept an xorg.conf from openSUSE-11.3. Possibly the nouvea driver does not work with your nVidia 9800 GT. Possibly your installation CD/DVD is bad !
when you booted with ‘nomodest’ your pc worked with the ‘nv’ driver; and when you booted with ‘failsafe’ your PC booted with the ‘fbdev’ driver
when you installed the proprietary nvidia driver, you likely (1) failed to black list the nouveau driver, and (2) failed to set NO_KMS to YES in YaST per the openSUSE-11.4 release notes.
the fact that ‘nomodest’ no longer works is expected when you have the ‘nvidia’ driver installed.
the fact the ‘failsafe’ does not work, is a bit surprising. Possibly the boot code ‘x11failsafe’ will be sufficient. Possibly you have an xorg.conf file in place you did not tell us about.
Until you can figure out what happened, I recommend you remove the nVidia driver.
Thank you for your reply… however I decided to do a fresh install again, but this time just keeping basic out of the box, no add on’s. Of course the same thing happened, had to go into failsafe and install nvidia drivers, but this time no conflict. and on reboot all worked great.