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I upgraded from Ubuntu 15.10 to Ubuntu 16.04 (which should be a stable LTS) and when I rebooted the system the login screen failed to load, a lot of [FAILED] lines appeared and a text login prompt was flickering on and off making it impossible to login or do anything. After a few failed attempts to recover the system I resolved myself to save the files I needed from Windows and to re-install the system anew.

After the re-install, since the nouveau drivers cause the PC to overheat I decided to try my luck changing the drivers to the proprietary drivers. As they worked on the 15.10 I stupidly thought that they should also work on the 16.04 forgetting how much it sucks when it comes to video drivers here... As a result the behaviour was the same as when I upgraded.

I tried various driver versions, added nomodeset to the Grub line, disabled secure boot... nothing working (some suggestions: Graphics issues after/while installing Ubuntu 16.04/16.10 with NVIDIA graphics).

To solve this problem I purged all nvidia-* packages, reinstalled xorg from scratch and now I can AT LEAST log in. Nice for an LTS release.

However I cannot change the brightness of the screen and if I suspend the PC it won't really wake up, but it will stay blank.

In addition

sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

doesn't do anything. It just fails silently.

For now I would just like to be able to bring the system back to the initial working state without the brightness and suspend problems and without having to waste other time reinstalling and re-configuring everything.

Do you have any suggestions?

Thanks.

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Marco
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    See this solution http://askubuntu.com/a/762255/167850 – Pilot6 Apr 25 '16 at 16:38
  • Thanks!! I ran sudo mokutil --disable-validation, then I rebooted the PC and a blue screen appeared saying something like "Booting in insecure mode" and "Pres any key for MOK management". I din't touch anything and now the system works with nvidia 364 drivers. The only problem is that if I swith to Intel in the Nvidia control panel or through prime-select and I log out, the log in fails :/ – Marco Apr 28 '16 at 20:44

2 Answers2

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I had the same problem since yesterday evening. I suspect it was caused by a recent kernel update. Check your kernel version:

uname -r

For me, the nvidia driver does not work with version 4.4.0-21, but it does with a older kernel from Ubuntu 16.04, 4.4.0-18.

Here is how you can test this: If you have the nvidia drivers still installed, make sure dkms builds kernel modules for all installed kernels.

Then reboot into the GRUB boot menu, go to Advanced Options and boot the older kernel. You should now be able to login. You can run the nvidia-settings tool to make sure you are running the nvidia drivers.

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Benjamin Geese
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  • This was a life saver. The recent 4.4.0-116 update sent me on a wild goose chase through tty nvidia reinstalls but I found this link thanks to this answer! – josh Feb 27 '18 at 11:40
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I have the same card that you... that card has something called optimus... you can select if you want to work with the intel core, or the nvidia core...

I have problems with the nvidia core... (I cant login, cant suspend my PC)... I solve the problem doing this

sudo apt-get purge nvidia*
sudo apt-get install nvidia nvidia-prime
sudo prime-select intel

If you already had your graphic card installer, you can try using just sudo prime-select intel

When I work with the intel core of my graphic card, I have no problems...

I have a similar problem that you... you can check my topic here: Problem installing ubuntu with nvidia geforce gfx 850

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Victor Hugo Arango A.
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  • Thank you. I already tried this. I can login (only with the Intel card) but still I can't change brightness... It's always to the maximum. – Marco Apr 25 '16 at 08:36
  • I have the same problem... I cant use the keyboard bottom to change the brightness... so you should change it this way: Go to System Settings.... brightness & lock.... and change it manually there.... – Victor Hugo Arango A. Apr 25 '16 at 11:08
  • Try the solution pilot6 gave in a comment to the question! – Marco Apr 28 '16 at 20:47