Restart loop after Nvidia Zotac card install

Question

I recently installed Ubuntu on my PC and I have some problems with my zotac gt730 2gb 128bit ddr3 Nvidia card.

I tried to install the Nvidia drivers, but after that it won't start anymore, it is stuck in a restart loop.

Answer 1

1. After the manufacturer's splash screen disappears when booting and right before the system starts to restart loop, bring up a text-only virtual console using the keyboard combination Ctrl+Alt+F3 and then you will get a text-only console which shows you a login prompt. Login to the console at the login prompt with your username and password.

2. Search for installed nvidia packages.

   apt list --installed | grep nvidia
   

3. Remove all the nvidia packages.

   sudo apt remove package-name

   Replace package-name with the names of the nvidia packages from the results of step 1.

4. If you have added an Nvidia PPA to /etc/apt/sources.list remove that PPA by prefacing its line in sources.list with a # to comment it out. Run sudo apt update to refresh the list of available software.

5. Reboot with sudo reboot

6. After you reboot, install the recommended Nvidia driver with the following commands.

    sudo ubuntu-drivers install  
    sudo reboot  
   

   The ubuntu-drivers install command installs drivers that are appropriate for automatic installation including their dependencies, and the Nvidia driver will also be updated automatically when an update is available.

7. If the boot process stops and gets stuck at the purple Ubuntu logo screen, bring up a text-only virtual console using the keyboard combination Ctrl+Alt+F3 and then you will get a text-only console which shows you a login prompt. Login to the console at the login prompt with your username and password. Run the following command to bring up the default Ubuntu login screen.

    sudo systemctl start graphical.target  
   

   and press Enter to bring up your default login screen and then login to your Ubuntu desktop environment as usual.

8. If you keep getting stuck at the same purple Ubuntu logo screen every time you boot you might want to replace the default gdm3 login display manager with the more lightweight lightdm login display manager and run the following command to enable lightdm as the new login display manager.

    sudo apt install lightdm  
    sudo dpkg-reconfigure lightdm