[ale] nforce smbus: error probing SMB1 and SMB2

[jrtroberts]

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:
Asus P5N-VM WS/TW100-E5

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.

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:

nforce_smbus 0000:00:03.2: error probing SMB1 and then something 
equivalent but
nforce_smbus 0000:00:03.2: error probing SMB2  Not sure if the hex 
numbers are different, I can check later.
(it might say nforce2, but I am not 100% on that)

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.

I do not really understand what is going on.  The Bios is almost no help 
as it is a minimalistic Bios at best.
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.

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.

Thanks and sorry for the long winded description.
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.

Thanks in advance for taking a look into this for me.
Joshua Roberts
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mail.ale.org/pipermail/ale/attachments/20100614/26c084d7/attachment-0001.html