Black flickering login screen after update

Question

After updating nVidia:

1. Instead of graphic splash screen with elementary logo, system boots in a verbose text mood
2. At the end, when XWindows starts, the screen just flickers
3. I cannot even open a non graphic terminal; it says that Ctrl+Alt+F1 shows a login prompt, but soon after, the screen flickers again

I could not post a picture. It wouldn't have been helpful, anyway. It just flickers between blank and tiny parallel vertical lines, indicative of wrong scan speed or driver for the graphic card.

My system is an old laptop.

• Dell XPS M1330
• Intel core2 duo 1.66GHz
• 1024 MB 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM
• NB8M-GS nVidia graphic controller
• Screen 1280 x 800 13"
• DVD/WR
• WIFI
• HDMI sound

How do I get graphic boot and login back?
How do I login to a terminal at the mean time?
How do I modify the run level to stop x11 from lunching allowing me to troubleshoot? Is there any other suggestion?

Answer 1

I have a similar problem too, on Nvidia's driver version 304xx. When I install the proprietary graphical drivers the elementary doesn't show up after login, it justs keep "loading" and gets back to login screen, my graphic card is a Nvidia Geforce 7050/ nforce 630i and I installed the drivers via apt using the command

sudo apt install -y nvidia-304

and

sudo apt install -y nvidia-xconfig

afterwards.

I recommend you to use the open source driver, it works well but you'll have problems to watch videos on older PCs.