Strange kde problems with Toshiba (kdm, kde, amarok) [SOLVED]

[wcs]

Apologise if it has been raised before... A search for kde or kdm didn't seem to show anything related.

I installed 5.9 standard and 5.9 deluxe in a toshiba sattelite 2450-101 laptop (about 5 or 6 years old), with 256Mb Ram and a Pentium 4, 2.66GHz.

With both versions, kdm completely locks (after the nvidia driver logo shows up). The cursor doesn't blink, the buttons cannot be pressed, but the mouse moves!
Ctrl + Alt + F1 does not work, the keyboard seems completely unresponsive. Booting into textmode and doing startx goes into the desktop normally and it is working fine, so it seems to be a kdm problem.
Reinstalling kdm-small (the version in the 5.9 repo has 5.8 as a version... that's strange) makes it work, but with the 5.8 "looks".

Starting k3b makes the computer hang again, while the command line information tells me that it is drawing the main window. The main window does show up, together with the splash screen. The same thing happens: mouse moves, but no buttons can be pressed (even on the panel) and keyboard does not do anything (including Ctrl + Alt + Backspace).

Amarok gives an error about missing  libkhtml (if I'm not mistaken).

Reinstalling k3b, amarok, and kdelibs, seems to solve the amarok problem, but not the k3b one (still crashes).

The same cd's have been used afterwards to install VL on two desktop computers and do not show any of these problems, and I checked the installation files during install.

Any ideas?
Thank you very much!

[kukibl]

Have you tried "nv" driver instead "nvidia"? I've read on some forums that people have strange problems when they use nvidia driver on older cards.

[The Headacher]

You may want to look for a newer version of kdelibs and kdebase. There were some trouble with one of those (don't recall exactly).

[wcs]

Have you tried "nv" driver instead "nvidia"? I've read on some forums that people have strange problems when they use nvidia driver on older cards.

That was indeed my first thought... But since the display is actually fine once kdm is bypassed, I started suspecting other causes.
Also, it seems to me that because the problems only seem to affect kde applications, there is something wrong with kdelibs or kdebase (which for some strange reason only happen in my laptop, but not on the desktop computers).

The Headacher: I couldn't find newer versions in the repo.... maybe I need to install kdebase. I don't think it is installed at the moment.

Thanks for the help, and I'll try both suggestions.

[caitlyn]

You may want to try the newly released 5.9 SOHO.  I'm using it on an older Toshiba (admittedly different model and video chipset than yours) and KDE is working perfectly.  There have been other reported issues with KDE on Standard that seem to be fixed on SOHO.

[wcs]

I would... but I'm very broke at the moment. 
In any case, I find it weird that this applies to 5.9 final, but no problems with 5.9 Standard RC3.  Weird...
I might just install RC3 and upgrade from there. Or SOHO, if I have a bit more cash.

[wcs]

I finally solved it.

It was indeed the nvidia driver. The 9x series got me a black screen, and I assumed the 7x series was the right one for my laptop.
Well, it wasn't, and it was causing the crashes.

I got the 9x series working by putting this in the Device section of xorg.conf:

Code:

Option "UseDisplayDevice" "DFP-0"

(using a Nvidia Geforce 4200 go)
No more black screen, and no crashes.

Everything's fine now...
Thanks for the answers!