This happened to me installing an no-name generic Nvidia Quadro NVS 290 pci-x into a Dell Optilplex OptiPlex 210L 32 bit machine. (Dell service tag FYF7Y91), which has an integrated Intel gpu using the i915 driver. There is no way to 'disable' onboard video but you can 'autodetect' added cards.
I took a video of the bootup with my phone and basically linux reboots right after it tries to load the i915 driver. My workaround was to add i915 to the /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.cfg but it still didnt fix the overall problem. nomodeset works but the problem with adding 'nomodeset' is that this prevents nouveau from working at all. Read around the internet and it needs kms modesetting in order for it to work properly. If you use nomodeset, then X boots up with software rendering, it doesnt use the 3d graphics card at all. running 'glxinfo' will show gallium / softpipe / llvm. Installing proprietary Nvidia driver does not help either. I poked around some kernel logs and basically it looks like nouveau itself crashes and dumps a bunch of info. In the end I gave up and am going to try using a different card. -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Desktop Packages, which is subscribed to xserver-xorg-video-nouveau in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1128801 Title: Adding second graphics card causes infinite reboot loop for Ubuntu, but Windows boots. Status in xserver-xorg-video-nouveau package in Ubuntu: Expired Bug description: I have a motherboard which is able to use both the integrated graphics card and a dedicated graphics card at the same time. The integrated graphics card is an RS880 [Radeon HD 4200] with two outputs, powered by the foss radeon driver. To this I am trying to add a PCI-Express NVidia Quadro FX (I think it's a Quadro FX 3450). Windows 7 boots fine on this configuration and is able to use both cards concurrently (one monitor attached to each card). However, Ubuntu enters an infinite reboot loop with this configuration. The Live USB has the same problem. I was able to boot it into recovery mode, but was not able to start X from this configuration (lightdm hangs with a black screen, and 'startx' says my user account is not authorized). When I configured my BIOS to use only the Quadro FX without the integrated card, Ubuntu booted fine using the nouveau driver. ProblemType: Bug DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.10 Package: xserver-xorg 1:7.7+1ubuntu4 ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.5.0-23.35-generic 3.5.7.2 Uname: Linux 3.5.0-23-generic x86_64 ApportVersion: 2.6.1-0ubuntu10 Architecture: amd64 Date: Mon Feb 18 00:02:43 2013 MarkForUpload: True ProcEnviron: LANGUAGE=en_CA:en TERM=xterm PATH=(custom, no user) LANG=en_CA.UTF-8 SHELL=/bin/bash SourcePackage: xorg UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to quantal on 2012-10-22 (119 days ago) To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video-nouveau/+bug/1128801/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages Post to : desktop-packages@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp