Upgraded Nvidia and now have blank screen

Question

I recently installed elementary on my laptop, but the screen kept flickering. I followed the instructions on this post https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2061180, but when I restarted my computer there was only a black screen to greet me. I've tried pressing CTRL-ALT-F1 but nothing shows up. I don't know how to fix this since I can no longer log into my account and can't access the terminal

Answer 1

This is a common error when the system doesn't know what driver to use. To install nvidia propretary drivers is quite simple: -You need a piece of software called Software & Updates; Apart from being able to control all the PPA installed and repositories, under the additional drivers section you can swap in-between proprietary drivers for nvidia and the open source Nouveau drivers counterpart.

To install Software & Updates:

sudo apt install software-properties-gtk software-properties-common

I always suggest to create the configuration file at the end of the driver installation:

sudo nvidia-xconfig

Answer 2

What I reccomend you to do is to completely remove and reinstall the Nvidia drivers with the proprietary ones. You can do this into Recovery mode - on the Grub boot screen select Advanced options for elementary os, then the first kernel version ot top with [Recovery mode] into it. Once the menu loads select first to configure network and then drop into the root terminal. Into the console there :

1. Type apt update in order to see if your network is successfully enabled

!!! Continue ONLY if you see normal update process with no errors. If you have no network connection removing the Nvidia drivers may lead to bigger problems, because you will not be able to install new ones.

2. Type apt remove --purge nvidia* in order to remove all Nvidia settings and packages you have installed already

3. Install software-properties-common package in order to add repositories: apt install software-properties-common

4. Add the proprietary repository add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa

5. Execute apt update to refresh packages information

6. Install recommended nvidia driver by typing ubuntu-drivers autoinstall

Reboot when everything is finnished by typing reboot into the console.

More info about the repository mentioned above - https://launchpad.net/~graphics-drivers/+archive/ubuntu/ppa