I installed Nvidia driver on fresh install of ubuntu
Now after reboot all i get is a blank screen. With nothing on it. Cant even get to the terminal. Prior to install i stopped lightdm
service. Please help..

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what nvidia graphics card do you have? which version of ubuntu? Was Ubuntu Linux working in the past? – Ashu Mar 10 '16 at 22:55
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Possible duplicate of Ubuntu 16.04 + Nvidia Driver = Blank screen | http://askubuntu.com/questions/41681/blank-screen-after-installing-nvidia-restricted-driver – Ciro Santilli OurBigBook.com Mar 12 '17 at 17:07
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Possible duplicate of Blank screen after installing nvidia restricted driver – karel Mar 13 '17 at 07:14
3 Answers
I am referring to this answer from my other answers. I had a login loop issue as mentioned here. It seems you are also encountering a different issue due to nvidia drivers.
First uninstall the currently installed NVIDIA drivers.Boot the computer, when the GRUB menu appears ...
Highlight the Ubuntu menu entry and press the E key.Add nouveau.modeset=0
to the end of the linux line. Press F10 to boot the Ubuntu operating system.
When the login screen appears press Ctrl + Alt + F1 .Enter your user name and the password, then execute :
sudo apt-get purge nvidia*
sudo reboot
Now install the latest official stable NVIDIA drivers.Boot the computer, when the GRUB menu appears ...
Highlight the Ubuntu menu entry and press the E key.Add nouveau.modeset=0
to the end of the linux line. Press F10 to boot the Ubuntu operating system.
When the login screen appears press Ctrl + Alt + F1. Enter your user name and the password, then execute :
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nvidia-361
sudo reboot
Note : Maybe it is explicitly necessary to select the NVIDIA adapter in BIOS.
In case you have installed the nvidia driver from their site then uninstall it as per that instructions.Uninstall that driver by running, as root, sh ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-361.28.run
and follow the on screen instructions.
Note : The solution I have provide has been tested on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and Ubuntu 15.10 for two GPUs. Mine HP Laptop has Nvidia GTX 950M graphics card. While HP Desktop has Nvidia 610.
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This one worked on my hp laptop elementary os based on 16.04 and nvidia-378. – Ajith R Nair Jan 25 '17 at 06:49
Screen Blanks/Monitor Turns Off
Using a laptop with a GeForce Go card, or connecting the sole display via DVI on a dual-head system sometimes results in the screen not receiving a picture. This is caused by the driver outputting video to the VGA port on the graphics card, instead of DVI.
The usual hint that you have this problem is when you hear the startup sound but nothing appears on the screen. If you do not hear any sound, you are more than likely experiencing unrelated problems.
This is a bug about displays on digital outputs being blank when using NVIDIA driver, and can be resolved by editing your /etc/X11/xorg.conf
:
- Switch to the console by using CTRL+ALT+F1, or reboot and select recovery mode from the GRUB menu.
- Open and edit xorg.conf like this:
sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf
. - Find the line that says: Section "Screen"
- Insert a new line that says Option "UseDisplayDevice" "DFP".
- Save the file by pressing CTRL+x and confirming to save. If you had to restart into recovery mode, type
reboot
, otherwise restart your display usingsudo /etc/init.d/gdm restart
.

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I'm on 18.04 and this doesn't seem to fix the issue. No errors in Xorg.0.log, but warnings about being unable to get the display device for DPI calculation. – bb94 May 20 '18 at 13:51
It's just a simple glitch in any linux distro. It happens because the way we install the drivers either through .run file or an unknown package managers. Main cause is that these procedures does not disable default xorg drivers & make nvidia drivers unusuable. For Ubuntu there's officially a procedure inorder to install nvidia drivers securely.
- Before install, remove any previous existing nvidia drivers: sudo apt-get purge nvidia*
- Ensure your Ubuntu based distro has a builtin driver manager, if not: sudo apt-get install kubuntu-driver-manager
- Update graphics drivers repository: sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa
- Search "Driver manager" through start & open it. Wait until Information gets collected. 5.Install suitable latest nvidia drivers & restart linux to confirm changes.

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