Ubuntu
hotkey-setup package

Screen is black after login

Asked by Allan Hernandez

I just installed Ubuntu on my HP HDX 18t. It has an Nvidia graphics card. I plugged in an HDMI cable to connect my external monitor. The laptop screen continued normal but my monitor was blank. I pressed Fn+F4 but all that happened was that my laptop screen went black as well. I tried pressing it again to undo, but it did not work. I restarted, but now every time I log in after the splash screen it goes to the same black.

How can I fix this? Thank you so much,
Allan

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actionparsnip
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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#1

Are you fully updated?
Have you installed the nvidia driver using the hardware drivers app?

Can you give the output of:

sudo lshw -C display

Thanks

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Allan Hernandez (allan-hernandez12) said : 		#2

Hello,

Thank you for your response. I had just run the update manager, it installed something like 250 updates. I'm not sure about the nvdidia driver. At the moment though I can't see the desktop so I can't use the hardware drivers app.

The output of that line(in recovery mode) is:

*-display UNCLAIMED
description: VGA compatible controller
product: G96 [GeForce GT 130M]
vendor: nVidia Corporation
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@000:01:00.0
version: a1
width 64biths
clock: 33mhz
capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list
configuration: latency =0
resources: memory d2000000-d2ffffff memory c0000000-cfffffff(prefetchable) memory d0000000-d1ffffff ioport:7000(size=128)

Thank you so much for your response.

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Best actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#3

ok from recovery mode can you get the internet for packages etc? If you can run:

sudo add-apt-repositories ppa:nvidia-vdpau/ppa; sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get install nvidia-glx-185

Should be fine. If you have no access run:

sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf

and type the below text:

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier "Layout0"
    Screen 0 "Screen0"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier "Monitor0"
    VendorName "Unknown"
    ModelName "Unknown"
    HorizSync 28.0 - 33.0
    VertRefresh 43.0 - 72.0
    Option "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier "Device0"
    Driver "vesa"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier "Screen0"
    Device "Device0"
    Monitor "Monitor0"
    DefaultDepth 24
    SubSection "Display"
        Depth 24
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Press CTRL+X, press Y then press enter and reboot. This will give you a failsafe display using the vesa driver, You can then use the hardware wizard to add the above PPA and install the 195 driver which will make your video card run nice, you will need to rename the xorg.conf file so that HAL/UDEV can autodetect stuff and use the right driver.

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Allan Hernandez (allan-hernandez12) said : 		#4

The first way didn't work, said I couldn't access the repository. I used the second method which brought up the display you mentioned. When I run hardware drivers manager, it goes with the 185. I can't figure out how to switch it to the 195. Should I go on Nvidia's website and install it from there? Or is the 185 fine?

I'm sorry for all the questions, but how would I go about enabling dual screen monitors? Thank you

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Allan Hernandez (allan-hernandez12) said : 		#5

I got it to work, thanks again.

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Allan Hernandez (allan-hernandez12) said : 		#6

Thanks actionparsnip, that solved my question.

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#7

Was it the xorg.conf file which got it working?

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Allan Hernandez (allan-hernandez12) said : 		#8

Yes, that's correct. It let me go into the low level graphics mode where I then accessed the hardware driver manager.