Nvidia gives an error during startup

try running:

sudo nvidia-xconfig

Then rebooting, is it any better?

Yes, I tried and didn't help.

However a few times now gdm would start successfully and when I restart computer again the same error would reappear.

Could you direct me how to troubleshoot this problem, I am trying to understand the reason but so far it is quite elusive. If there was NVIDIA configuration problem, I expect that it would be consistent, but it doesn't look like that.

Thanks

Can you give the output of:

sudo lshw -C display; dpkg -l | grep nvidia

Thanks

     Just dropping in here, but saw this a long time ago. Have SIMILAR problem on my computer, using 10.04, except I am using an Intel built-in chip and it drops me out after I start up and am using Linux. Have linked this accordingly to bug # 577487. Does seem as though you should be able to boot in before this starts, though.

Here is the output. Last time gdm started successfully. If during X startup an errro is reported, I switch to the console mode and use startx with no loss of functionality.

$ sudo lshw -C display; dpkg -l | grep nvidia
  *-display
       description: VGA compatible controller
       product: GT218 [GeForce 310]
       vendor: nVidia Corporation
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:08:00.0
       version: a2
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list rom
       configuration: driver=nvidia latency=0
       resources: irq:16 memory:fa000000-faffffff memory:d0000000-dfffffff(prefetchable) memory:ce000000-cfffffff(prefetchable) ioport:ec00(size=128) memory:fbd80000-fbdfffff(prefetchable)
ii libvdpau1 0.4-2~karmic~nvidiavdpauppa4 Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix (
rc nvidia-common 0.2.23 Find obsolete NVIDIA drivers
ii nvidia-current 195.36.15-0ubuntu2 NVIDIA binary Xorg driver, kernel module and
rc nvidia-glx-190 190.53-0ubuntu1~karmic~nvidiavdpauppa14 NVIDIA binary Xorg driver
ii nvidia-settings 195.36.08-0ubuntu2 Tool of configuring the NVIDIA graphics driv

Thanks

ok try this:

sudo apt-get --purge remove nvidia*; sudo apt-get --purge autoremove

Then reboot

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nvidia-vdpau/ppa; sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get install nvidia-glx-185; sudo nvidia-xconfig

Then reboot again