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I have installed 22.04 from a USB stick, and after the install I want to change the display settings to reflect the positions of my monitors. The system becomes unusable at this point. After clicking "Apply", the mouse pointer stops responding fluidly (or at all) so it's impossible to confirm or reject the setting changes. The mouse pointer does not improve after the screens reset to their original positions. Afterwards the displays seem fairly broken. After the last time I tried this then tried to logout, the left monitor was displaying a "Keep these display settings?" dialogue (with five seconds remaining), the right monitor was displaying a "Log out " dialogue with 50 seconds remaining, and the centre monitor was completely blank in the top two-thirds, and showing only a darkened desktop over the lower third. After a hard reboot, the desktop did not display after I entered my password the first time, and once the desktop was visible, the mouse pointer froze after I moved it onto the third screen. The system was then unusable again.

This problem does not happen if I only change which monitor is the primary display. It only happens when re-arranging screen positions.

This problem also doesn't happen if I am running 22.4 from the USB stick, after selecting "Try Ubuntu", even if I re-arrange the screen positions.

I guess this might be a hardware problem, but I'm not sure how to discover the exact source:

  • I ran memtest86 for about six hours, with no errors, and the CPU temperature never going over 65 degrees.
  • I had originally wondered if this was an SSD problem, and it may be, but it seems weirdly specific. smartctl does not indicate any problems, but I may not be using it correctly.
  • I have a PNY Quadro P400 2 GB Video Card, and in the past I've had issues when I've tried changing drivers. In this case though, the problem occurs even when I do not tick the installation option for proprietary drivers.
  • The CPU is an AMD Ryzen 7 2700 3.2 GHz 8-Core. It can't drive a monitor by itself, so there's no easy way to temporarily bypass the graphics card.

I don't know if it's connected, but I also can't use ctrl-alt-fn to switch to a terminal to command a shutdown.

What tests are worth trying? How can I identify the root cause? I am happy to reinstall with just one monitor, or to try to run tests before completing an installation, using just the USB stick. What would you check for?

James Barton
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    log out and try X11 server instead (wayland is default). It might be that wayland can't cope with NVIDIA... To change it click on the cog icon on the right bottom side before logging in. – kanehekili May 23 '22 at 00:19
  • This seems to work - thanks! I had to do another reinstall, but after installing with only one monitor connected, then switching to X11 before connecting the other monitors, it seems fine. – James Barton May 25 '22 at 18:08
  • Thanks for the feedback. – kanehekili May 25 '22 at 19:00

2 Answers2

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After running this command:

sudo ubuntu-drivers autoinstall

And rebooting the system, everything worked fine!

Jonathan Martins
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On my Ubuntu 22.04 I noticed that a lot of the display settings (grouping external screens under Settings and background adjustment under Appearance in Gnome Tweaks) only work or can be changed when I use the 'dark style' (under Appearance in Settings). I am new to Linux and no expert, but maybe this is a simple solution for others too.

robocoppi
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