Fixing NVIDIA driver issues on Ubuntu Karmic
So after yesterday’s completely improper upgrading of my Ubuntu box from Jaunty to Karmic, I did an actual reinstall today (with the alternate CD), keeping my /home partition intact. It went mostly well, but there was a slight hiccup: X would freak out and render my screen all jittery when launching GDM.
The fix here was rather easy: jockey-text, which is the text version of Jockey, the program that usually pops up about restricted drivers. Just run:
$ sudo jockey-text -l
xorg:nvidia-173 - NVIDIA accelerated graphics driver (Proprietary, Disabled, Not in use)
xorg:nvidia-185 - NVIDIA accelerated graphics driver (Proprietary, Disabled, Not in use)
xorg:nvidia-96 - NVIDIA accelerated graphics driver (Proprietary, Disabled, Not in use)
As you can see, I had three options, and none of them were “in use.” So I just ran:
$ sudo jockey-text -e xorg:nvidia-185
Now, a listing shows me this:
$ sudo jockey-text -l
xorg:nvidia-173 - NVIDIA accelerated graphics driver (Proprietary, Disabled, Not in use)
xorg:nvidia-185 - NVIDIA accelerated graphics driver (Proprietary, Enabled, In use)
xorg:nvidia-96 - NVIDIA accelerated graphics driver (Proprietary, Disabled, Not in use)
I let it do its thing, and things were back to normal! I don’t know why, by default, my install had an unusable desktop, since I figured some other drivers would have been there, but this is a quick fix from the command line for anyone who needs it, when a GUI is completely unavailable.
Perhaps someday I’ll get back to posting other Linux-y, Gentoo-y things… Damn games that only run on Windows keep me locked in there far too often. 
thank you!
thank you, saved my life
Thank you!
My terminal freezes after running the -e command. Any workaround?
@Chinmay
The jockey-text commands do take some time. Does it hang (i.e. you can still type stuff into the terminal), or completely lock up?
Yep, that did it for me on the HP mini 113. Thank you!!!
I had to add the line
Option “NoPowerConnectorCheck” in Screen section…
Now enjoying my good karma!
when i try to do this i get this msg ” SystemError: installArchives() failed “
if any one have idea plz contact me
email : mr.m.elmahdi@gmail.com
i get the same as ramon install archives failed. this was all working fine on my karmic then my gl drivers stopped working so i tried to reinstall the 185 driver and then i have run into problems. i have done this many times in the past without problems (first removing the driver with sudo sh NVIDIA* –uninstall) and then reinstalling with sudo sh NVIDIA* so im wonderinf now why this doesnt work.
having them looked at the dkms problem (dkms status), and then using this jockey idea (which shows clearly that although i have removed nvidia i havent removed everything because it shows that i have 185, 190, and 195 (all of which i have tried and supposedly removed) still there but disabled and not in use.
it seems that if there was a way to completely remove all these drivers to avoid conflicts and start again it would proably solve the probelms, although i havent yet sem how to do this.