black screen when booting whereas failsafe mode works

Question

I've had a problem for quite some time now. When I boot up my Ubuntu 11.04 it just won't load X. It works when I first load in failsafe mode and then restart X, however this is a quite annoying procedure to go through every time I start my computer.

What I've found in my Xorg.1.log that looks suspicious is this:

Using config file: "/etc/X11/"

In the Xorg.failsafe.log it says

Using config file: "/etc/X11/xorg.conf.failsafe"

which to me makes more sense.

Here is my Xorg.1.log http://pastebin.com/AfF50sji and here is the xorg.conf file found in /etc/X11/xorg.conf http://pastebin.com/Gy2ANKwD

Everything works fine after failsafe start and X restart, but the computer just won't start in a normal way.

Answer 1

I would have expected the log Xorg.0.log to be used for trouble-shooting.

Here is a suggestion. Try moving to one-side the xorg.conf file and rebooting.

Then rerun nvidia-settings.

i.e.

sudo mv /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.backup

reboot, then

gksudo nvidia-settings

Edit:

It is also worth ensuring that nvidia is installed corrected. Go to your Additional Drivers window and deactivate the nvidia driver. Then purge any remaining nvidia software installed i.e.

sudo apt-get purge nvidia*

Double check you haven't added anything to your grub boot options that deals with graphics e.g. nomodeset, vga= etc etc. If you have - remove them and do an sudo update-grub

If you have previously blacklisted nouveau then unblacklist it. Reboot. You should be running with the default opensource drivers.

After rebooting - reinstall the Additional Drivers "nvidia-current" driver. Rerun nvidia-settings as described previously.