How can I uninstall Nvidia proprietary drivers? [duplicate]

OK, so I know that other people asked exactly the same... but I just moved from Nouveau to Nvidia using this tutorial, and the new drivers are really, really, really slow. How can I remove Nvidia drivers and recover the open ones?


Solution 1:

  1. If you added things to the blacklist, remove them now from the list with sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf
  2. Now close your session and press Ctrl + Alt + F1 in the login menu.
  3. Login with your username and password.
  4. Run sudo stop lightdm, which will stop X11 (including the standard login menu!)
  5. Now exec sudo nvidia-uninstall
  6. Press Yes to restore from a backup.
  7. You may find errors related with non-empty folders. Ignore them.
  8. If you removed Nouveau, run sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-video-nouveau
  9. Now you can finish with sudo reboot

Solution 2:

I had a similar problem. Solved like this:

  1. Boot as normal and get to login screen

  2. press Ctrl+Alt+F1

  3. Login with your username and password.

  4. type sudo stop lightdm and press Enter, stops X11

  5. type sudo apt-get purge nvidia* and press Enter - clears all nvidia items

  6. type sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-video-nouveau and press Enter - will install this package or tell you if it is already there.

  7. type sudo reboot

This got me back up and running (although no icons in Unity Launcher - since need correct graphic drivers) check system settings to search for Additional drivers to see if this can be addressed - although adding wrong drivers may cause the system to be faulty or freeze after login.