Robert Posted May 19, 2016 Share Posted May 19, 2016 My new video card arrived today. Unfortunately I was using Nvidea restricted drivers so now it goes to a blank screen. All the usual commands to get to a terminal, like ctrl-alt-f1, are useless because the screen remains blank. I have so many custom settings on this install it would take me many hours over several weeks to restore by hand, so I would like to try and save it. The home folder is encrypted which makes what I propose even harder. I would like to hook up the Ubuntu drive as a slave drive to another computer, access it, and make it revert to a non-nvidea driver. Is this even possible? I've never seen the question asked before. I guess I could also search eBay for the exact video card that died, but I'd like to try this first if anyone knows how to change the video file settings. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted May 19, 2016 Share Posted May 19, 2016 Follow one of these methods but stop after doing the chroot step. Once that command is done, you are essentially into your installation and then you can make whatever changes needed. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCdRecovery Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted May 19, 2016 Share Posted May 19, 2016 If it's an Nvidia card you might try adding "nomodeset" to your boot options and with luck you'll get a GUI. Then you can change to nouveau and see if it works. If it's an AMD card this probably won't work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert Posted May 20, 2016 Author Share Posted May 20, 2016 I forgot about Live CDs. I'm burned out on computers today so will try tomorrow. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert Posted May 21, 2016 Author Share Posted May 21, 2016 The computer kept locking up with the live cd within a couple of minutes of reaching the desktop, regardless if I did anything once there. I have an older disk drive with Ubuntu on it that also went to the blank screen. It was what I was using before i switched to a SSD. With the live cd I started a new install on it, but just after it made a new partition for a side-by-side new installation I changed my mind and quit. Next boot the drive worked fine. The nividia drivers recognized the new graphics card all on its own. I was thinking of trying the same with the ssd, but noticed the new Ubuntu 16. Since that also will give me a "upgrade" option in the menu, I downloaded it and and doing an install now. Maybe it will fix the booting on this drive. I'll know in a few minutes when the install is complete. I know this is a weird path of fixes I am on. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert Posted May 21, 2016 Author Share Posted May 21, 2016 The 16.04 install seems to have worked. It defaulted to Gallium graphics and my home folder looks intact. They removed the nice night sky background in this version. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zlim Posted May 21, 2016 Share Posted May 21, 2016 You can probably import the desktop you want from a previous version. I've imported LXLE Desktop wallpaper into Windows computers because I liked the images. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted May 21, 2016 Share Posted May 21, 2016 Glad you got it sorted Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert Posted May 22, 2016 Author Share Posted May 22, 2016 I downloaded the background so that's good again. I still lost some settings, so they must be things not kept in the home folder. Steam would not reinstall. Google says it won't install unless nvidia video drivers are first. I'm going to wait on that. Thanks everyone for helping! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dr. J Posted May 23, 2016 Share Posted May 23, 2016 You can probably import the desktop you want from a previous version. I've imported LXLE Desktop wallpaper into Windows computers because I liked the images. Nice. I've got the windows 10 default wallpaper, windows XP bliss, and that 'night sky' wallpaper from Ubuntu as part of a sideshow on KDE (Debian) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LilBambi Posted May 24, 2016 Share Posted May 24, 2016 If it's an Nvidia card you might try adding "nomodeset" to your boot options and with luck you'll get a GUI. Then you can change to nouveau and see if it works. If it's an AMD card this probably won't work. Excellent, you already posted what I was gonna post! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert Posted May 25, 2016 Author Share Posted May 25, 2016 I google instructions for that and was left felling stupid. Just google it again and still am lost. Anyway, time for an update. I had so many problems with Ubuntu 16 (mainly it was locking up and had graphics problems that made me think the new gpu card was defective) that I wiped the SSD drive and reinstalled U16. That gave me a new problem. The mouse would disappear. I google that to find it was a common problem and I never did find a fix. So I wiped the SSD drive again and installed Ubuntu 14. That finally worked. Then, with all this done I plugged in my old Western Digital Ubuntu hard drive what had also been giving the black screen when I first tried it, checked the graphics settings, and it was running a Nvidia driver and correctly identified the new graphics card. It did that on its own. I have no idea how. I'm sticking with the nouveau driver on the SSD for now because I am tired of things going wrong. In the middle of all this I was also testing Ubuntu installs multiple times on a third drive and never could get the Nvidia drivers to work. Hours and hours of getting nowhere. It's been over two weeks now and I'm finally back to Ubuntu install that looks good and has lasted more than 24 hours. Lessons learned: I was saved by an extra hard drive I had been experimenting with Fedora on back in March. I had copied .thunderbird and .mozilla to it back then, along with all sorts of custom settings, making it a good second home I could move right into. It accepted the temporary video card and later the replacement video card when it arrived. The old Western Digital hard drive was also blank screen so could not be used. It was not up to date anyway. Having a backup is helpful. I never expected a failing graphics card would have led to reformatting the drive, or so much trouble. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted May 25, 2016 Share Posted May 25, 2016 Honestly with all those problems, I would of left Ubuntu and tried something different. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted May 25, 2016 Share Posted May 25, 2016 (edited) I have tried Ubuntu 16.04 in VirtualBox and also booted it with a thumbdrive on my main system. It works OK but I have AMD video hardware. Ubuntu 16.04 does NOT support the fglrx AMD driver so if you want that stick with 14.04. I know 16.04 is LTS but HJ had a good suggestion: wait for 16.04.1 to come out before installing on any system you depend on. As for me I stick with good ole stable Linux Mint 17. Linux is usually pretty good with the same brand of video card. If it has the Nvidia driver installed you can usually put another Nvidia card in the machine and everything will work, provided you don't replace a very old card with a leading edge one. If you are using nouveau just about any Nvidia card should work. Edited May 25, 2016 by raymac46 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert Posted May 26, 2016 Author Share Posted May 26, 2016 Honestly with all those problems, I would of left Ubuntu and tried something different. I have tried so many different distros and desktops that I can't even remember them all now. Last year I threw out a large stack of DVDs with them. The main problem was scaling up windows, menu bars, fonts, and mouse cursors. I simply can't deal with the microscopic world the developers put on the screen. I need large everything. Ubuntu is one of the best at this. The only adjustment I need to use the terminal for is enlarging the mouse cursor. There were a couple of other distros out of dozens that were comparable, but then I was unable to get vpns to work. In one case I spent hours trying to figure out what was wrong before I found out the network settings I was trying to change were no longer operational, but left there by programmers that forgot to remove them from the menu. The latest Fedora with Gnome is the closet I've found to a Ubuntu replacement. I am able to do almost everything, it is just harder to do or requires more steps to accomplish the same task. It also suffers from blank menu bars and if I fill up the screen space of a file directory it won't let me paste more files with the mouse. There is no top menu bar to do it though so I guess they expect you to use keyboard commands. Maybe I need to spend more time googling how to copy and paste to figure out if they have a "secret" method. Or I can just stick with Ubuntu and its more minor problems and irritations. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted May 26, 2016 Share Posted May 26, 2016 Understandable. As far as copy/paste, I know you probably know ctrl-c/ctrl-v but you can copy and paste text by simply highlighting the text (left mouse button held while you drag your cursor) with your mouse and then middle click to paste the text. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LilBambi Posted May 31, 2016 Share Posted May 31, 2016 Yep, finding the right distro for each of us is sometimes a challenge depending on what we need it to do. If Ubuntu works best for you Robert, might be best to stick with Ubuntu. I find Debian KDE works best for me, but I know it's not best for everyone. I am glad you shared the copy/paste alternatives Josh. Like in any OS, there are always at least 2 or 3 ways to do most things. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted May 31, 2016 Share Posted May 31, 2016 I am glad you shared the copy/paste alternatives Josh. Like in any OS, there are always at least 2 or 3 ways to do most things. Except in Linux when you could possibly have hundreds or thousands of ways of doing things (if you choose). heheheh Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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