what error?... vid shows nothing of any value, other than the pink text - which you already know you have - so something's goofy... as to errors, a linux install's verbose text display while booting will show all kinds of interpreted errors as it probes your hardware and installs... did you not get a desktop?
No, no desktop. This is as far as I could get. The drive I created is probably no good, then.
And the pink lines - as we've seen - are inconsistent. I thought it was worth documenting that they appeared in this case and not some others.
but wait a second... you said you had the same artifacts (I assumed, lines) occurring in xp as well as macos... so I looked at the vid... I didn't see them... I saw an xp installation with poor gfx response - possibly no gfx acceleration or driverless... impossible to tell from here... did you not install the gfx driver in xp?...
I did not install drivers. I can try tonight. It seemed to me that the poor performance was similar to the poor performance I saw in OS X, but I included the videos side-by-side because I wanted to give those of us more attuned to the nuances of these problems a chance to verify (or not). Sorry. I stand corrected.
although it may have been easier to boot into a linux dist and install the nvidia recommended driver - you chose xp... and it only looked unaccelerated - no lines... so maybe you're not done... a bad card? -maybe not... but you're not following directions - re-seating the card means re-seat it in the same slot, not move it... is the slot you moved it to the same speed as the primary slot?...
I wasn't clear about that. Originally, I had the card in the PCIEX16_1 slot. I tested it in the PCIEX16_2 slot but got identical results. I moved the card back to the PCIEX16_1 slot. I thought that amounted to reseating it. I should have said so.
a usb stick install isn't hard, but maybe this is over your head - no insult intended... have you ever installed a linux dist from a usb?... usb sticks can be tricky... you originally said you were having issues with usb sticks or ports - can't remember... rufus from an ancient windows machine? - eff that...
The usb stick install has so far been beyond me. I am still trying. I haven't generally had USB problems with the computer, no. I am making sure to use USB 2.0 slots. The drive shows up reliably. I've been able to boot Sierra from USB etc. That hasn't been a problem so far.
it seems unnecessary now to mess with linux... but if you insist on checking it in linux - and you're in new territory, forget ubuntu... get a linux mint distribution - burn the iso to a disc and boot the damn box... do you have a cd/dvd drive installed in this machine?... or keep playing with the usb stick - whatever...
I was pursuing Ubuntu because it's what you lovely people advised. My only cd drive is in the desktop that doesn't work, so I haven't been able to burn a disc. That's why I was trying to do the install via USB. That process got trickier than I expected. My only home computer is a Mac laptop, so I first tried to build the USB drive via UNetBootin. That didn't work. So I tried again using Rufus from a Windows machine at work. That's the failure I documented in my last post.
The point of the Ubuntu install, as I understand it, was just to test to see if the GPU was working. Since I was having so much difficulty finding or generating a bootable version of Linux - and since an XP install disc just fell into my lap - I thought I'd try installing that in the hopes that that would also be a viable test of the GPU.
I'm very grateful for all of your insights, and I'm trying my best to follow your instructions. Thanks again.
