Video driver stopped working

After running without a problem for some time, suddenly my wife's
machine (debian etch on Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L MB) seems to have stopped
responding to mouse inputs, and then when I exited X, display of
keyboard inputs as well. So I rebooted to find that the X server
wouldn't restart.

When I tried to startx, I got:

(II) Primary device is: PCI 01:00:0
(EE) No devices detected
Fatal Server Error
no screens found

The PCI-E 16X MSI NX8500GT graphics card has a nVidia chip. When I
originally built my wife's machine the nv module didn't work with the
graphics card, and so, for a reason I now forget, I replaced the nv
module with the nVidia proprietary module. Now the X server started, but
the display lacked any red color. So I replaced the MSI card with
another MSI (different model), and things went better, although the
display might have been a bit dark, and recovering from screen saving
was very slow (compared to now when I'm using the vesa module).

The problem now is that the nVidia module has stopped working with the
card, and I'm forced to run her graphics display with only the vesa
module. That does well (she does not need acceleration), but I'd like
to track down the problem because the vesa module might also stop
working at any moment for some reason.

It seems there's an incompatibility between the graphics driver and the
graphics card. Do I blame MSI (saw nothing on line to support this) and
simply replace the card again for a third time, or is there something
else I should check before taking an expensive step that I have no
assurance will work? If I do have to change the card, what would you
recommend as a very reliable and inexpensive PCI-E 16X graphics card?
(other than MSI of course ;-().

--

Haines Brown, KB1GRM



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