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I have Ubuntu 14.04 and an Nvidia GT540M. I had also installed CUDA and it was working fine. Last week I installed some updates and I experienced some problems and I had to remove the Nvidia drivers in order to make my system work. Now I would like to install them again, but every time the same problem reoccurs. Some packages that were installed may cause that problem and I would like to uninstall them or install a previous version, to make my system work.

Nvidia driver that was working before the updates: nvidia-340

Packages that were installed-updated:

History of the drivers I installed and uninstalled while I was trying to make it work:

After querying ubuntu with ubuntu-drivers devices, as suggested, I got:

model : GF108M [GeForce GT 540M]
vendor : NVIDIA Corporation
driver : nvidia-331 - distro non-free
driver : nvidia-304 - distro non-free
driver : nvidia-304-updates - distro non-free
driver : xserver-xorg-video-nouveau - distro free builtin
driver : nvidia-331-updates - distro non-free
driver : nvidia-340 - third-party non-free recommended

--- EDIT 1 ---
After installing the nvidia-340 and I reboot, I got to tty1 (Ctrl + Alt + F1) to uninstall the driver. Before I do anything it displays the following:

  • Starting NVIDIA Persistenced Daemon [OK]
  • Starting NVIDIA PRIME Power Saving Mode [OK]
  • Starting NVIDIA Persistenced Daemon [fail]
  • Starting LightDM Display Manager [OK]
  • Stopping Send an event to indicate plymouth is up [OK]

Can anyone help me on what should I uninstall or, in general, what can I do to make CUDA work again?

--- EDIT 2 ---
As far as I understand, I do not have two drivers installed simultaneously. I have also noticed that CUDA-6.5 is installed in my computer. Is it possible to develop CUDA programs without having the NVIDIA drivers?

--- EDIT 3 ---
An update was available today, were some packages said something about updating the firmware and some hardware support. I re-installed the nvidia-340 driver but the results were the same, when I rebooted my computer. So, I had to uninstall them again. The only difference is that, when I enter the tty1, the terminal does not display what it was displaying in "EDIT 1". Also, there are no Errors to "Report" this time, after logging in.

Should I expect this problem to be solved in the near future? Or should I do something else?

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  • Because you have already tried installing the graphics drivers and CUDA from the Ubuntu Software Center and also from the NVIDIA website, please provide information about whether using specific versions of the graphics driver and CUDA packages is important or critical to the work that you are using CUDA to do.
    – karel
    Nov 6, 2014 at 17:13
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    As far as my work is concerned, I need CUDA 5.5, 6.0 or 6.5. For the CUDA 5.0 version I need the 319.* driver and NOT the 331.* (I installed this only to try things out in the picture shown above). For CUDA 6 I need the latest drivers.
    – Grey
    Nov 6, 2014 at 20:33
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    Please query Ubuntu about the recommended proprietary graphics driver for your hardware, which usually returns a list of available drivers with a unique recommended result. From the terminal run the command: ubuntu-drivers devices. This command may also partly explain your difficulty in getting the graphics driver to work properly, in case an nvidia-331* driver (either nvidia-331 or nvidia-331-updates) is the recommended one.
    – karel
    Nov 6, 2014 at 23:06
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    The output of ubuntu-drivers devices is showing that nvidia-340 third party driver which you downloaded from the NVIDIA website is the recommended one. This is probably the nvidia-340 driver that gets downloaded and installed as part of the NVIDIA graphics/CUDA 6.5 bundle from the NVIDIA website. This NVIDIA graphics/CUDA bundle has also caused problems with other people who are using Ubuntu 14.04. Also if you didn't have nvidia-340 installed, then ubuntu-drivers devices would usually recommend a proprietary graphics driver from the Ubuntu repositories.
    – karel
    Nov 6, 2014 at 23:15
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    I should also not neglect to add that you can't have two or more proprietary graphics drivers installed at the same time. You have to fully uninstall the existing proprietary graphics driver before you install a new proprietary graphics driver. You never have to uninstall the nouveau open source graphics driver, since it doesn't interfere with the proprietary graphics drivers.
    – karel
    Nov 6, 2014 at 23:20

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