NVIDIA – Desktop Not Showing After Installing NVIDIA Drivers

kernelnvidia

The desktop does not show after I installed nvidia experimental drivers. I tried nvidia simple proprietary drivers, and they did not work either.

Here is how it looks. This is not cropped or any thing. This is how it looks, after the installation of the drivers the desktop resolution decreased from 1440×900 to 1024×768

enter image description here

The desktop only shows desh and panels when I use the open source drivers.

Is there any way to fix this so I can get better performance?

Best Answer

I had the same thing happen. Here is how I fixed it:

  1. Switch to a terminal Ctrl+Alt+F1.

  2. Login as your username.

  3. Install linux headers: 

    sudo apt-get install linux-headers-generic

  4. Uninstall nvidia driver - this depends on which version you installed :

    sudo apt-get remove nvidia-current

    or 

    sudo apt-get remove nvidia-current-updates

    or 

    sudo apt-get remove nvidia-experimental-304

  5. Reinstall nvidia driver

    sudo apt-get install nvidia-current-updates

    When you do this, it must say something like:

    Building initial module for 3.5.0-17-generic
Done.

    If it says

    Module build for the currently running kernel was
skipped since the kernel source for this kernel
does not seem to be installed.

    then the problem will not be solved. Do not believe the message. It is not asking for linux-source to be install, it does only want the headers but you must install the specific -generic headers for your kernel. Run:

    sudo apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r`

    It will not work with just linux-headers-generic or linux-headers-3.5.0-17 (for example).

  6. If it successfully installs, restart the computer :

    sudo shutdown -r now

This should allow the kernel module to compile and install properly. It did for me!

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