screen artifacts on rebooting or shutting down

[José Jorge Enríquez]

If the nVidia restricted driver is enabled (either version 180 or 173), when rebooting or shutting down, the screen would show some artifacts (vertical lines or a kind of "white powder" that extends slowly). These "artifacts" appear when the system is just about to finish rebooting or shutting down.

The issue is present in Jaunty 32 bit and 64 bit versions.

Some other people at Ubuntu formus have reported the same issue (same laptop):
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1138333

My system is a Dell XPSM1330 with nVidia 8400 graphics card. I'm trying to figure out whether it is a driver problem or a sign of the faulty nVidia chips in these machines:
http://en.community.dell.com/blogs/direct2dell/archive/2008/09/12/nvidia-gpu-update-limited-warranty-enhancement-details.aspx

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.04
MediaBuild: Ubuntu 9.04 "Jaunty Jackalope" - Release amd64 (20090420.1)
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: nvidia-glx-180 180.44-0ubuntu1
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=es_MX.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersion: Linux version 2.6.28-11-generic (buildd@palmer) (gcc version 4.3.3 (Ubuntu 4.3.3-5ubuntu4) ) #42-Ubuntu SMP Fri Apr 17 01:57:59 UTC 2009
SourcePackage: nvidia-graphics-drivers-180
Uname: Linux 2.6.28-11-generic i686

[lspci]
00:00.0 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation Mobile PM965/GM965/GL960 Memory Controller Hub [8086:2a00] (rev 0c)
     Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:0209]
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: nVidia Corporation GeForce 8400M GS [10de:0427] (rev a1)
     Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:0209]

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

I've posted a new version of the -nvidia driver to our xorg-edgers PPA,
would you mind testing it either on Jaunty or Karmic and see if it
resolves this bug?

Get nvidia-graphics-drivers-180 - 185.18.14 here:

  https://edge.launchpad.net/~xorg-edgers/+archive/ppa

[José Jorge Enríquez (jenriquez)]

I've tested it on Jaunty, but the problem is still there, I got
vertical colored lines on screen just before rebooting :(.

I added the PPA repositories and made an update:

$ aptitude show nvidia-glx-180
Package: nvidia-glx-180
Status: installed
Automatically instaled: no
Version: 185.18.14-0ubuntu1~xup~1~jaunty

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for nvidia-graphics-drivers-180 (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]