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I have an old (2005) Compaq Presario V6000 laptop

GPU is listed as being NV45 Nvidia

I hadn't used it in a long time, and it had a non-working version of Windows on it. I tried installing Ubuntu versions 12.04 through 16.04, and no matter which version I use I get the same error occurring: when I go to shut down, restart, or access the system search icon at the top of the menu bar, the screen goes nuts with all kinds of wild crazy garbage and random pixels, primarily involving a lot of the color yellow. It eventually 'calms' down and the display almost looks normal, except for a centimetre (approx) thick band of yellow around the popup window for the last selection I made (the choice to restart or shut down for example). But I can't select anything because the machine has locked up.

Here's the funny thing... everything else works fine. I can surf the web, look at images on the desktop, even watch MP4s stored on a thumb drive. All the other warez work swell too.

When I checked to see which graphics driver was being used after each install, the system showed that NO graphics driver had been installed, not even Nouveau. So first I tried installing Nouveau which installed successfully, but I get the same results as before. So then I tried Nvidia-304, and later Nvidia-430. After installing the Nvidia drivers I get a different result: no matter how many times I logon to the machine after starting or restarting, the logon loops forever. WTF!

I'm now wondering if this is a graphics driver issue, or if something related to booting up or system inquiries is causing these issues? Anybody have any suggestions (short of torching an ancient and no doubt underpowered laptop)?

Ganesa_9
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  • Oh yeah, when the yellow band appears around the last open window/popup, the cursor also changes to a large yellow rectangle. – Ganesa_9 Nov 01 '20 at 23:19
  • Only supported releases of Ubuntu (*standard* support, no EOL, ESM or *development*) are on-topic so your mention of ESM releases isn't on-topic here. You've only vaguely mentioned the problem (pictures maybe more helpful), however I used boxes as old as from 2003 in testing 18.04.5 *flavors* (the latest x86 release in August 2020), and a couple of ibm thinkpads (pentium M) performed better with the GA kernel (than HWE provided on the ISO), but your detail is too limited for me to help. Specifics on releases matter (inc. details of software stack on the release used) – guiverc Nov 02 '20 at 00:11
  • GPU is listed ?? Is that as provided in text to the OS (ie. detail from `lshw -C video` which lists hardware of class video) or something else. Marketing detail as usually found on web sites is less helpful, than the detail the chipsets provide to the OS running, or wanted to be installed & used. You didn't say where you got the NV45 from? – guiverc Nov 02 '20 at 00:14

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