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I have installed Ubuntu 12.04 on my desktop. I have got NVIDIA 8400GS which is giving me a lot of problems. Ubuntu does not take the drivers automatically and I'm forced to work in 800 x 600. I tried to install additional drivers but it did not do anything rather it gave me an error after installation and I had to reinstall the system.

Now I'm trying to install the drivers manually, but when I go to Console mode and turning off the graphics via Ctrl+Alt+F1, the screen remains black and whatever I type, nothing happens.

How can I fix it?

Sooraj S
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Wanny Miarelli
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  • How did you install them? – Xerz Feb 16 '13 at 12:22
  • I have not yet installed. To do this I have to exit the graphics mode via CTRL + ALT + F1, but when I start this mode, the screen remains black and I can not write anything. Pressing CTRL + ALT + F7 back to normal graphics mode. – Wanny Miarelli Feb 16 '13 at 12:34
  • I mean the graphics card drivers – Xerz Feb 16 '13 at 14:42
  • This will do: http://askubuntu.com/questions/162535/why-does-switching-to-the-tty-give-me-a-blank-screen –  Oct 09 '14 at 09:59

3 Answers3

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The gentleman has 2 problems: 1. He needs NVIDIA 8400GS support 2. Ctrl+Alt+F1/F2/F3/F4 doesn't work.

Issue #1 - You should try going into the hardware drivers of your Ubuntu settings manager. I forgot what Ubuntu 12.04 looks like in Unity or Gnome. So I cannot guide you there. If this does not work out, I would suggest doing a distro upgrade to 13.04 (Raring). That I have done before in the Xubuntu flavor and it worked like a charm. Why do this? The hardware support of older graphics boards improved in the kernel and Xorg software.

Issue #2 - I have been trying myself to find out how to get back Ctrl+Alt+F1/F2/F3/F4 functions from years gone by. This is a life saver when things go really bad on the desktop and you need to break in with a tty to perform trouble-shooting. All I get now in 13.04 and 13.10 with Ctrl+Alt+F1 are dead desktop keyboard typing and mouse when I do that although, fortunately, Ctrl+Alt+F7 takes me back to sanity.

Richard Elkins
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  • 2015-04-30 using Xubuntu 14.04 LTS with an Intel driver: My symptoms have gone away since upgrading from 13.10. Ctrl-Alt-Fn keys are fully functional. Sorry, I have no access to Nvidia hardware to do any testing. – Richard Elkins May 02 '15 at 21:16
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This is a known bug in the nvidia drivers, too many links out there to reference. Answers seem to be:

  1. Use nouveau drivers instead of nvidia (blech!)
  2. Hope that some magic kernel directive will work for you.

I've lived with this for months, periodically trying to see of anything will work. This morning I tried appending nomodeset to the kernel line and it worked, but I'm sure that I've tried this in the past without success.

For anyone tracking this, I'm running Ubuntu 14.04LTS on a MSI X58M (MS-7593) motherboard with an nVidia GeForce 210 card and the current nvidia-331 driver.

nortally
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Actually, if Ctrl+Alt+F1 doesn't work, you need to start in recovery mode as your machine is just hung. Ctrl+Alt+F1 should bring you into a text console without graphics.

Once in recovery mode, you need to uninstall the drivers you have... Afterwards, I would advise not to use the standard Ubuntu NVidia drivers as they generate some problems on slightly older and slightly newer NVidia hardware.

If you want more then the standard Ubuntu repository drivers, install the xorg.edgers PPA. As the xorg.edgers group ask not to give installation instructions directly without linking to their page, this is the best I can do.

If you don't know what a PPA is or need some guidance after reading their page, leave a comment below.

Fabby
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