Ubuntu dapper nvidia failure

I've been running dapper without any problems for several months, but after a recent kernel update, my X configuration stopped working.

I didn't reboot immediately after applying the kernel update, so I don't really remember when the update was applied and thus what it was.

And perhaps the update has nothing to do with the problem because I can't even get any video signal during the Bios part of the boot. Also, there is a long beep during boot.

Everything else seems to be working properly. Perhaps I need to get a new video card.

I tried removing and re-inserting the video card, but no luck. Here is an interesting line from dmesg:

[   43.611885] nvidia: module license 'NVIDIA' taints kernel.
[   43.615672] NVRM: No NVIDIA graphics adapter found!

Here is what lshw sees:

root@weasel:/var/log# lshw | grep product
    product: MS-7125
       product: MS-7125
          product: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 3800+
          product: ( )
             product: None
             product: None
             product: None
             product: None
          product: CK804 Memory Controller
          product: CK804 ISA Bridge
          product: CK804 SMBus
          product: CK804 USB Controller
             product: OHCI Host Controller
                product: Microsoft Wheel Mouse Optical
                product: hp LaserJet 1160 series
          product: CK804 USB Controller
             product: EHCI Host Controller
          product: CK804 AC'97 Audio Controller
          product: CK804 IDE
                product: LITE-ON DVDRW SOHW-1693S
          product: CK804 Serial ATA Controller
             product: ST3250823AS
             product: ST3250823AS
          product: CK804 Serial ATA Controller
          product: CK804 PCI Bridge
             product: 3c905 100BaseTX [Boomerang]
          product: CK804 Ethernet Controller
          product: CK804 PCIE Bridge
          product: CK804 PCIE Bridge
          product: CK804 PCIE Bridge
          product: CK804 PCIE Bridge
          product: K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration
          product: K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map
          product: K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller
          product: K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control

Again, no video card. The card that it isn't detecting is an nvidia geforce 6600. At least, that's what was previously working in my xorg.conf.

Solution

The problem was fixed by putting in a new video card. Newegg got one here remarkably fast, it was auto-detected and auto-configured by Ubuntu Dapper, and now I have X running again. The new card is probably beefy enough to run compiz, although I haven't tried that yet.

I chose a Gigabyte Nvidia 7300GS

Here is what lshw sees now:

        *-display
             description: VGA compatible controller
             product: nVidia Corporation
             vendor: nVidia Corporation
             physical id: 0
             bus info: pci@05:00.0
             version: a1
             size: 256MB
             width: 64 bits
             clock: 33MHz
             capabilities: vga bus_master cap_list
             configuration: driver=nvidia
             resources: iomemory:fa000000-faffffff iomemory:d0000000-dfffffff iomemory:fb000000-fbffffff irq:66

And here is what I see in /var/log/dmesg:

[   37.256335] NVRM: loading NVIDIA Linux x86_64 Kernel Module  1.0-8776  Mon Oct 16 21:53:43 PDT 2006