Nvidia drivers won't work on linux mint

Question

My nvidia drivers won't work. They worked just fine before my last update. I have been trying to get them to work again but with no success.

if I run:

nvidia-settings

I get this error:

ERROR: NVIDIA driver is not loaded

if I run:

nvidia-smi

I get this error:

NVIDIA-SMI has failed because it couldn't communicate with the NVIDIA driver. Make sure that the latest NVIDIA driver is installed and running.

I tried to install the default drivers using: sudo ubuntu-drivers autoinstall, which installs the 390 version. However i read somewhere that this driver isn't compatible with the more up to date linux kernel.

Then i tried installing the ppa and a more updated nvidia driver (after purging the old nvidia packages)

sudo apt-get remove --purge '^nvidia-.*'
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa
sudo apt-get install nvidia-driver-430

But this won't work as well. I actually read that this drivers don't support my graphics card. Is there anything i can do to get my card working again?

My card is a GeForce GT 635M and am using Linux Mint Ulyssa

Does https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/542360/how-to-install-the-latest-nvidia-drivers-on-linux-mint-19-20 answer your question? Nvidia also specifically updates the 390 legacy driver to support all recent kernels; its purpose is to ensure older GPUs such as yours can function with new operating systems [- From Nvidia](https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/drivers/unix/legacy-gpu/). — Thegs, Mar 29 '21 at 19:45

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 31 '21 at 13:04

1

Try software-properties-gtk --open-tab=4. It should open a GUI menu where you can select proprietary drivers (like nvidia). Hope this helps!

answered Mar 31 '21 at 13:04

0sleep

31
5

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited May 26 '22 at 15:25

I found a solution at How to fix Ubuntu NVIDIA driver is not loaded by Simon Pham (at "DEV Community"). Summary:

Check if NVIDIA prime is installed with:

sudo apt install nvidia-prime

Then run these commands:

sudo prime-select nvidia
sudo rm /lib/modprobe.d/blacklist-nvidia.conf
sudo update-initramfs -u

(If you get a "no such file or directory" error, ignore it for now; it should be OK. After it's done running, reboot and run this command:

nvidia-smi

If you get a list of information, then it should be fixed.

Nvidia drivers won't work on linux mint

2 Answers2

Linked