Black screen after installing Nvidia driver Ubuntu 20.04.02 LTS, RTX 30 series or ubuntu screen stuck at system logo screen

I am writing this question to answer the following issues:

After installing Nvidia driver from Software & Updates(Additional Drivers Tab) or Command line, Ubuntu did not start.(Stuck at system LOGO screen or it shows black screen).

I was trying on ASUS ROG Strix G15 Ryzen 7 Octa Core 5800H - (16 GB/1 TB SSD/Windows 10 Home/6 GB Graphics/NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060) G513QM-HN319TS Gaming Laptop.


Following are my observations for a successful installation.

  1. Disable Secure boot from BIOS settings(ESC key)(Required step).
  2. Disable fast boot from BIOS (Not required).
  3. nomodeset option does not work to run Ubuntu in most cases and is only useful to bypass loading the video driver.

How to start ubuntu again in UI mode?

Once Stuck on the Black screen or logo screen. Run ubuntu from advance Options in recovery mode. Goto root option and press enter. It will show a terminal with root access. Then run the following commands.

"prime-select query"

to check which driver system is loading. If it shows nvidia. Then Run the command

"prime-select intel"

to load intel drivers. Now reboot. You should be able to run Ubuntu again.

How to install Nvidia driver for RTX 30 series.

In my case, when I was installing the driver from Software & Updates(Additional Drivers Tab). I installed the version of nvidia-driver 460.80 which was the latest version Ubuntu 20.04 provides and it seems that it is not supported by kernel version 5.8 which comes with Ubuntu 20.04.

what to do?

  1. First of all check which driver version is supported for your system from Nvidia official website. https://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx. Make sure your installed version matches this version. For Me, the correct one was 460.84 instead of 460.80.

  2. To support the latest driver, kernel version 5.8 is not enough. Check kernel version using: uname -r We need to update to 5.11. I tried with 5.12 but did not worked for me. I installed ubuntu 21.04 which gives kernel version 5.11.0-18-generic. You can try updating kernel version manually from: https://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/

Goto v5.11.22 version and download 4 files ending in .deb according to architecture of your system. AMD64 for ryzen users. : linux-headers, linux-image, linux-modules and the linux-headers-*_all.deb. Download only generic versions of files. Goto the directory where all of these files are downloaded and run: sudo dpkg -i *.deb Now reboot the system and run ubuntu with 5.11 kernel version from advance option in grub menu.

How to install nvidia driver once kernel is updated

  1. Run the command sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa to get the 460.84 version or latest for your supported system.
  2. Run sudo apt install nvidia-driver-460 to install the driver.
  3. Reboot the system once or twice.

How to ensure nvidia is running properly.

  1. In Top right corner of Ubuntu. Goto Settings -> About. See the Graphics It should show Nvidia with model name.
  2. Run nvidia-smi or nvidia-settings. It should work fine.

I hope this helps. :)

Edit: After doing all these steps my nvidia was working fine but I was facing issue with asus rog keyboard. Every key press was performing power button action in asus built in keyboard. Though external keyboard was working fine. Following post helped me through this issue: https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/t/os-still-using-renoir-after-installing-nvidia-drivers-ubuntu-18-04-rtx-3060-amd64-ryzen-7/181795/2