Ubuntu – Remove nVidia driver and go back to Nouveau

Had the same problem.

sudo apt-get install --reinstall xserver-xorg-core libgl1-mesa-glx

This actually fixed it. Ubuntu 13.10 x64 + nVidia 740M. Thank you very much!

You did not mention your GPU. If you've had that problem on a laptop, I'd suggest its because of the so-called "Fusion" system (which uses your integrated GPU in lieu of discrete one when you don't need it).

Ubuntu 14.04 and beyond

Please note that nouveau drivers manual removal is required only if you are going to install the proprietary nvidia drivers yourself. If this is not the case then directly install the required graphic drivers from System > Administration > Hardware drivers. It's the recommended and the most convenient way available.

We'll blacklist all the culprit modules, remove all the nvidia* packages and as an extra step we may have to update the initramfs disk because it could be configured to load the modules at startup.

1. Blacklist the modules. Open the blacklist.conf file.

   sudo vim /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf
   

   press i to enter insert mode and add the following modules in the file.

   # this one might not be required for x86 32 bit users.
   blacklist amd76x_edac 
   
   blacklist vga16fb
   blacklist nouveau
   blacklist rivafb
   blacklist nvidiafb
   blacklist rivatv
   

   Save the file and exit.

2. Remove all the nvidia* packages

   sudo apt-get remove --purge nvidia-*
   

3. Once you are done with the steps above, reboot, stop the display manager and try to install nvidia drivers.

   Press Ctrl+Alt+F1. Once you are in the text mode, stop the display manager. This will forcibly terminate all running applications, so you better save anything you're working on and close them yourself before completing this step. To stop the display manager, run one of these commands depending on your display manager (lightdm is default in vanilla Ubuntu, but older versions or systems with GNOME desktop may use gdm and on KDE/Kubuntu/Plasma it should be kdm:

Edit: To determine what the default display manager your Ubuntu system is using, issue the command cat /etc/X11/default-display-manager While this doesn't guarantee you anything, in many cases it will be the correct choice.

    sudo service lightdm stop

    sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop

Now, run the driver package that you downloaded from Nvidia’s website. Edit: Replace the filename in the example below with the one you actually have.

    sudo ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86-260.19.44.run

Note: If you still get the error related to nouveau drivers then you are probably required to update the initramfs, which might be configured to load the nouveau drivers. Don't reboot or poweroff, run this command to update the initramfs disk.

sudo update-initramfs -u

Now reboot and repeat step 3. This time things should go smoothly.