Unable to Uninstall Nvidia Drivers

[jmarsz]

So I'm currently having issues with my current Nvidia drivers (get a black screen when the computer comes up, but if I enter the password, it will log in). When I try to run "sudo apt-get purge nvidia*" I get the following:

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
E: Unable to locate package nvidia-install.txt
E: Couldn't find any package by regex 'nvidia-install.txt'

Any idea why it thinks that the nvidia-install.txt is a package? I'm guessing this file is somewhere it shouldn't be, just not too sure where exactly...

[hansdown]

Hi jmarsz.

Is this a virtual install?

[efflandt]

Which nvidia driver package do you have installed now. In other words what do you get for:

dpkg-query -l nvidia* | grep ii

Although, I got strange or no results for that when I had some file with nvidia in its name in my home directory. So maybe such a file in your home directory is tripping up apt-get with nvidia* wildcard.

[jmarsz]

This is not a virtual install, and this is what I got when I ran that command:

jmarsz@Sager:~$ dpkg-query -l nvidia* | grep ii
dpkg-query: no packages found matching nvidia-install.txt

[MAFoElffen]

efflandt & OP-- I think you might have hit it.

I know in the past (about 3 years ago or so) , for about a 3-month period, where using an "nvidia*" wildcard when trying to remove the nvidia packages didn't work as expected. During that period, we had to list the nvidia packages that were installed, then manually remove each package that was installed (use the name from that list). Don't remember why that was, but removing them individually by package_name worked back then, so...

[Dale61]

As explained elsewhere, I have returned as an Ubuntu user, and when I tried to install restricted drivers, as instructed, all I got in return was a black screen; no cursor, no way of knowing what was happening. All I could do was turn off the laptop, so I decided to reinstall from scratch. I upgraded until I was current, but there is now no need to install restricted drivers as the replacement has been installed instead.

I have missed so much in the three years I have been away!

[jmarsz]

Even after removing all the Nvidia drivers, and installing them from the additional drivers section, I still get a black screen when I try to log in. If I have the Noveau drivers loaded, I can see the login screen. It's only when I'm running the nvidia drivers do I have this issue. Any suggestions?

[MAFoElffen]

You started this out with "I can't purge nvidia drivers." You skipped a few step in letting us know what your main complaint is (that is in your last post)... and what you are working on (make & model, so we can look up the specs).

Please post the results of (from recovery root prompt):

lspci -vnn : grep -i VGA && lshw -n -c video

That would show us what the hardware is ID'ed by via linux.

Next is post your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file and your /var/logs/Xorg.0.log file that is where you tried to load the nvidia drivers. The "0" in that denotes current. "1" would be 1 times past. Xorg.2.log would be 2 times before current. For instance, if load the nvidia driver and it frags, then reboot to recovery... copy over from a root prompt... or if you can boot it on another (via renaming the xorg.conf to anything else, then rebooting again... then it would be 1 past...

Do you need any more info to be able to get those for us?

[jmarsz]

I kind of wrote the last post in a bit of a hurry, so let me give everyone and update:

Originally I wasn't unable to uninstall the Nvidia drivers due to it trying to uninstall the "nvidia-install.txt" file. I found out that when I typed:

sudo apt-get purge nvidia*

It was trying to run against a file I had in my home directory. Once I got rid of that file, I was able to uninstall and re-install the driver. I am still having the issue though where when the computer (which is a Sager laptop with both an Nvidia card and the Intel graphics) come up to the login screen, I just get a black screen when I'm running the Nvidia card. I can still enter my password and get logged in (and the screen does come back), it's only when I'm at the login screen on the Nvidia card does it display black. When I'm on the Intel graphics, I can see it just fine...

[MAFoElffen]

You said you re-installed your nVidia driver, but have not installed nVidia Prime yet? Once you have your nvidia driver installed then:

sudo apt-get install nvidia-prime

You have hybrid graphics, so you need nVidia Prime to do your GPU and driver switches. Once that is installled, go into the nVidia control panel and configure your driver.