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I have been working on a machine for a while now, trying to get it up
and running with Ubuntu x86_64 10.04. It has a core2 quad, 8gigs of
ram, two video cards (one an onboard nvidia quadro fx 470, the other an
EVGA Geforce [model number escapes me at the moment]), each with two
outputs to run four monitors. Initially it seemed to run fine. Then I
checked and the system monitor was only seeing 2.9 gigs of ram, not the
8gigs I had installed. After checking I saw that the bios needed to be
updated. Specifically the update description said, fixes error that
prevents the installation of 64 bit operating systems when more than 4
gigs of ram present. So the Bios was updated from 4.08 I believe to
6.01. The motherboard model is: <br>
Asus P5N-VM WS/TW100-E5<br>
<br>
After I updated the bios the nividia x server crashed. The machine
tried to boot into low graphics mode. I removed and reinstalled the
driver for the two nvidia based cards. Doesn't boot into low graphics
mode anymore, but currently I can't run nvidia settings because the
nvidia xserver is not running. I dialog box instructs me to run sudo
nvidia xconfig. This generates a new xorg.conf file, but I still can't
run nvidia settings or reload the gdm.<br>
<br>
Upon reboot I noticed that the system would hang at the desktop, after
menu bar had disappeared. It didn't even get to the shutdown splash
screen. Then a hard reboot. After Bios Post there is a pause then an
error message:<br>
<br>
nforce_smbus 0000:00:03.2: error probing SMB1 and then something
equivalent but<br>
nforce_smbus 0000:00:03.2: error probing SMB2 Not sure if the hex
numbers are different, I can check later.<br>
(it might say nforce2, but I am not 100% on that)<br>
<br>
So the two video cards won't work together anymore. I can't load the
nvidia settings app. I am not sure what I did, but it seems to
shutdown smoothly at this point. It does see all the ram, but having
ram is a poor trade off to losing video cards.<br>
<br>
I do not really understand what is going on. The Bios is almost no
help as it is a minimalistic Bios at best.<br>
I won't have access to the machine again until next weekend, at which
point if I can't solve the issue I will just bring it home and beat my
head against it until I dent my skull, the machine, or fix it; which
ever comes first.<br>
<br>
If it is a Bios problem and not an ubuntu problem, then I must roll
back the Bios and lose the ram. If it is an Ubuntu problem I am lost
for a solution. Hopefully someone has seen something like this before
and can help me out.<br>
<br>
Thanks and sorry for the long winded description.<br>
If any info is needed for further troubleshooting please list the info
needed and commands/ steps required to acquire it. I am a relative
newb to linux, although not to computers. I will try to have the info
up around this time next weekend.<br>
<br>
Thanks in advance for taking a look into this for me.<br>
Joshua Roberts<br>
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