Ubuntu 15.04 and Mint Cinnamon 17.1 won't login after Nvidia driver install

[grahammechanical]

Ah, but you have still to solve the issue of repeat postings.

If something is saying Haswell and also Nvidia I would not be surprised if you have hybrid graphics. Does this machine have Nvidia Optimus technology?

@Ubfan1

Make sure those latest Nvidia drivers you are trying to install support that graphic adapter. The latest proprietary video drivers often drop support for old graphic adapters. I have Nvidia GT220 and Nvidia 346 driver does not support it. So, I am using what Additional Drivers call "legacy binary driver" 304.125.

You can find out here

http://www.nvidia.co.uk/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-uk

Regards.

[ubfan1]

@grahammechanical
Oops, I had left off the driver (which was the 304 one) when I was talking about versions. I took your suggestion to try Lubuntu and that performs acceptably with the nouveau driver. My old Ubuntu 14.04 installation upgraded to kernel .,.. 39 and Nvidia 304.117 when it "started smoking". Thought it was the motherboard, but eventually put new cpu thermal paste and tried the new install. The old one I tried again immediately overheated with a burning insulation smell,so I stopped that and went to Lubuntu. The new 304.125 does not overheat as fast as the older 304.117, but the machines was always marginal for running Unity (Ubuntu 12 would only run Unity 2d). Anyway stock Lubuntu runs OK, thanks for the suggestion.

[Lemonz]

My gpu is supported by the 346 driver but no hybrid graphics.
Before I had the Nvidia drivers installed, the Nouveau couldn't read my graphics card, so it used the CPU's integrated graphics (Haswell from the name of the i7 processor). After I installed the right Nvidia driver though, my computer could read my GPU properly and now I see Nvidia 840m listed (correctly) as my graphics card.