Ubuntu – Ubuntu 15.10 won’t start with NVIDIA drivers installed

15.10driversgraphicsnvidia

I recently bought a new desktop computer and installed Ubuntu 15.10 64-Bit on it. By default, the nouveau driver is in use for my Nvidia Geforce GTX 960, but I cannot watch any video on Youtube with more than 360 pt, so I installed the proprietary Nvidia drivers. The boot process, however, does not get past the Ubuntu logo with the blinking circles below it, and I cannot do anything in that situation except for pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del to reboot. This happens with the driver from the standard repository (nvidia-352 which is installed via the software-properties-gtk interface) as well as with the driver from the Xorg-Edgers PPA (nvidia-304 on which the nvidia-current package depends). I would try the driver from the official Nvidia page, but it requires me to disable the nouveau driver first and I don't know how to do that.

Does anyone have an idea on how to get the driver working?

Update (12/04/15): With the boot options quiet splash nomodeset, the system boots normally. After some file system checks, the Nvidia logo appears and then the login screen appears. The output of lspci -v | grep -A 14 NVIDIA

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GM206 [GeForce GTX 960] (rev a1) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
    Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 8678
    Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx-
    Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx-
    Latency: 0
    Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 138
    Region 0: Memory at de000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
    Region 1: Memory at c0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
    Region 3: Memory at d0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=32M]
    Region 5: I/O ports at e000 [size=128]
    [virtual] Expansion ROM at df000000 [disabled] [size=512K]
    Capabilities: <access denied>
    Kernel driver in use: nvidia

01:00.1 Audio device: NVIDIA Corporation Device 0fba (rev a1)
    Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 8678
    Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx-
    Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx-
    Latency: 0
    Interrupt: pin B routed to IRQ 17
    Region 0: Memory at df080000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
    Capabilities: <access denied>
    Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel

02:00.0 USB controller: ASMedia Technology Inc. ASM1142 USB 3.1 Host Controller (prog-if 30 [XHCI])
    Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 8675
    Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
    Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx-
    Latency: 0, Cache Line Size: 64 bytes

suggests that the nvidia module is in use, which I can confirm with lsmod. Still, I can watch Youtube videos only in 144p.

Update (12/07/15): It finally works. I cannot say precisely what made it work. I installed two packages: nvidia-common and nvidia-modprobe, updating all installed packages in the process. I also ran nvidia-xconfig which created a xorg.conf in my /etc/X11/ folder. Finally I added quiet splash nomodeset to my grub.cfg (as opposed to adding them in the grub menu at each boot). After rebooting, I was able to watch videos in HD. I then deleted the xorg.conf and also purged the two packages I had just installed, and it still works. So either the updating of my installed packages or the boot parameters in the grub.cfg made the difference.

Update 2 (12/07/15): So I removed the quiet splash nomodeset from my grub.cfg (and I didn't add them in the boot process either), and it still works. So I have no idea what changed the situation. Let's just see if this change is permanent now 🙂

Best Answer

First you have to uninstall all NVIDIA drivers and repositories you have already installed before.

When the GRUB boot menu appears - Highlight the Ubuntu menu entry and press the E key.
Add the nouveau.modeset=0 parameter to the end of the linux line ... Then press F10 to boot.

When the login screen appears - press Ctrl+Alt+F1.

Enter your user name and your password - then execute :

sudo apt-get install ppa-purge
sudo apt-get purge nvidia*  
sudo ppa-purge ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa
sudo reboot

Now install the latest official NVIDIA drivers 358.16 which support your GEFORCE GTX 960 GPU.

When the GRUB boot menu appears - Highlight the Ubuntu menu entry and press the E key.
Add the nouveau.modeset=0 parameter to the end of the linux line ... Then press F10 to boot.

When the login screen appears - press Ctrl+Alt+F1.

Enter your user name and your password - then execute : 

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nvidia-358
sudo reboot
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