Ctrl+Alt+F1 = Problems Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

[Purple Narwhal]

Hey all! I've been using Ubuntu 12.04 LTS for almost a month now and I love it! I wanted to start playing some old Steam games on it, but I have out of date drivers, so I get an error message at Steam's launch. I am using a GeForce 6200. To update my drivers, I went to the nVidia website and got the latest drivers for my system. The only way I could get them was as a .run file. I executed them in terminal as described on the Ubuntu website and got error messages about the X environment and such. I learned that I had to use Ctrl + Alt + F1 to go to a command line and exit the GUI. When I pressed those keys, the screen flickered and had lines all over it. I couldn't do anything except Ctrl + Alt + F7. That took me back to the desktop GUI, but the background had the same lines from the "command line" screen. It stayed like that until I did a reboot. I tried updating everything, no help. I had no programs running. I also tried the terminal command "sudo service lightdm stop" didn't help, same lines on the screen.

So, any ides on how to fix it? Thanks!

[papibe]

Hi Purple Narwhal. Welcome to the forums

I'd recommend uninstalling that driver, and following these instructions to install the proper Nvidia driver (310-experimental).

Regards.

[Purple Narwhal]

Thanks for replying. Unfortunately, my system says it it not using any proprietary drivers when I go to additional drivers.

What can I do to fix this? Thanks!

[papibe]

Let's do it manually then.

Make sure you removed the one you installed from the site:

sudo NVIDIA-Linux-xxx-xxx.xx.run --uninstall

Replace "NVIDIA-Linux-xxx-xxx.xx.run" with the actual name of the script you downloaded.

Clean the house:

sudo apt-get purge nvidia-*

sudo rm -rf /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Then restart your machine.

Once you get into the desktop again, install the Steam driver:

sudo apt-get install nvidia-experimental-310

Create the X config file:

sudo nvidia-xconfig

Restart. Now you should be using the proper Nvidia driver for Steam.

Let us know how it goes.
Regards.

[Purple Narwhal]

When I did exactly what you said and rebooted after installing the experimental drivers, Ubuntu couldn't startup. I get a black screen. I can go into the recovery console by holding shift if there is a way to fix this problem.

Thanks!

[papibe]

Sorry to hear that.

Let's try the current stable version then:

Boot until you get the black screen, wait a minute or so, and go to text-mode console by pressing Ctrl+Alt+F1

Login and uninstall the previous driver:

sudo apt-get purge nvidia-*

sudo rm -rf /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Then restart your machine.

Once you get into the desktop again, install the normal driver:

sudo apt-get install nvidia-current

Create the X config file:

sudo nvidia-xconfig

Restart:

sudo reboot

Let us know how it goes.
Regards.

[Purple Narwhal]

Thanks for helping, but I cannot get to the command line using Ctrl + Alt + F1. It has no response on the black screen. What should I try now?

[papibe]

Boot into recovery mode. You can't install anything, but at least you can remove packages:

sudo apt-get purge nvidia-*

sudo rm -rf /etc/X11/xorg.conf

sudo reboot

Let us know if that helps.
Regards.

[Purple Narwhal]

Well, uninstalling the old drivers in recovery mode and then re installing the current normal drivers through terminal worked! I can run steam and it shows up in additional drivers! I still can't use Ctrl Alt F1. This is what it looks like (See attachment)
photo.JPG
Thanks for helping!

[papibe]

Glad you got Steam working

At this moment, I don't know why it does not go to text mode. I can suggest trying Ctrl+Alt-F2 through Ctrl+Alt-F6.

If that doesn't get you there, you may want to try the boot option called 'nomodeset':

gksudo gedit /etc/defualt/grub

Look for a like that looks like this:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"

Add nomodeset to it so it looks like this:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash nomodeset"

Save the file, and reboot.

Let us know if that fixes the text mode problem.
Regards.