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I have a laptop Dell 7720 with nvidia 650m discrete card. After installing ubuntu 14.04 it seemed to work fine. I downloaded nvidia current driver, changed to it in additional drivers and in nvidia x server. It worked. Then i switched back to intel graphics and after some time i discovered that i cant switch back. Simply because ubuntu doest detect my card anymore.

root@Inspiron-7720:/etc/X11# lspci | grep -i vga
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller (rev 09)

It was the first time. So i though mb the problem was in my BIOS so installed windows, updated it and installed ubuntu again. And it worked again. But now after just few hours it's gone. By the way there is no xorg.conf in /etc/X11/ and i've never configured it. Any suggestions? Thanks.

whattaf
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  • Ok. I even reistalled ubuntu again. Didnt update anything and it doent detect my card. I'm confused – whattaf Oct 17 '15 at 14:11
  • That card is not supposed to show up under "VGA" and if it does, there is something wrong. Have a look at this. – dadexix86 Oct 17 '15 at 15:06
  • @dadexix86 but it didnt even showed up in lspci at all. I tried lspci | grep -i nvidia it showed nothing. But now its shown as VGA not 3D is it a problem? – whattaf Oct 17 '15 at 15:17
  • I don't know whether now it's a problem or not. If it works fine than I suppose it's not :) – dadexix86 Oct 17 '15 at 15:23

3 Answers3

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Strange things happen :) I found a topic on one forum (guy encountered almost the same problem, but his video card did appear in lspci) and i copied code for xorg.conf from there:

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier  "Layout0"
    Option      "AutoAddDevices" "false"
    Option      "AutoAddGPU" "false"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier  "DiscreteNvidia"
    Driver      "nvidia"
    VendorName  "NVIDIA Corporation"
    BusID "PCI:02:00:0"

#   If the X server does not automatically detect your VGA device,
#   you can manually set it here.
#   To get the BusID prop, run `lspci | egrep 'VGA|3D'` and input the data
#   as you see in the commented example.
#   This Setting may be needed in some platforms with more than one
#   nvidia card, which may confuse the proprietary driver (e.g.,
#   trying to take ownership of the wrong device). Also needed on Ubuntu 13.04.
#   

#   Setting ProbeAllGpus to false prevents the new proprietary driver
#   instance spawned to try to control the integrated graphics card,
#   which is already being managed outside bumblebee.
#   This option doesn't hurt and it is required on platforms running
#   more than one nvidia graphics card with the proprietary driver.
#   (E.g. Macbook Pro pre-2010 with nVidia 9400M + 9600M GT).
#   If this option is not set, the new Xorg may blacken the screen and
#   render it unusable (unless you have some way to run killall Xorg).
    Option "ProbeAllGpus" "false"

    Option "NoLogo" "true"
    Option "UseEDID" "false"
    Option "UseDisplayDevice" "none"
EndSection

Put it in my /etc/X11/xorg.conf , but ubuntu got freezed after first reboot. But after the second one it did boot and recognized my card..somehow. Although there is no xorg.conf in /etc/X11/ now.

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller (rev 09)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GK107M [GeForce GT 650M] (rev a1)

Now i've installed nvidia-346 and nvidia-prime as @Pilot6 suggested and will see if it will work. I have no idea what happened. If someone knows, please tell me.

whattaf
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  • That is a very good idea. It means that sometimes the adapters do not detect automatically. There was a similar question. – Pilot6 Oct 17 '15 at 15:24
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You installed a wrong driver for your Nvidia card.

nvidia-current is a legacy nvidia-304 driver for old cards. It does not support 650m.

You need to install the correct driver. run in terminal

sudo killall nvidia-persistenced
sudo apt-get purge nvidia*
sudo apt-get install nvidia-346 nvidia-prime
Pilot6
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This happens when you get a kernel update. The NVIDIA driver, modifies the kernel when it installs. Later, you accept kernel updates, and the older kernel with the NVIDIA modules is no longer in use.

Its probably a good idea to update your kernel periodically, just keep in mind that any previously installed kernel modules will not be present in the updated kernel. You can always reinstall. Or you could not do kernel updates. Or, you could boot to your older kernel with the modules you previously installed.

j0h
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