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Okay, I have an HP Envy 17 laptop that was preloaded with Windows 8.1. I ditched Windows in favour of Linux. My laptop comes with the NVIDIA Geforce 840m. I install Ubuntu 14.04, and go to the Additional Drivers tab, and my GPU is not detected. So I go to the Nvidia website, and was glad to see that they support the Geforce 840m. I followed a Youtube tutorial on how to install the Nvidia driver https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ-r3gS38RU. All went well until the Nvidia installer said it did not detect a supported GPU. I then proceeded to install the PPA to see if that would activate my GPU. It does, and I am able to select different versions of the driver in the Additional Drivers tab. However, the moment I do anything that uses the GPU, the driver crashes. No matter what driver version I use, I get the same result. Please help, I do a lot of 3D modelling, and I don't want to go back to using Windows!!!

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In order to get your nvidia GPU to work, you need to install "bumblebee", just like it is mentioned on the wiki:

sudo apt-get install bumblebee bumblebee-nvidia primus linux-headers-generic

However, your card is not supported by the default drivers, since it is too recent, and thus, you will need to take additional steps.

First of all, you must install the latest drivers sudo apt-get install nvidia 346 (at the time of writing).

Afterwards, you must edit the file /etc/bumblebee/bumblebee.conf and replace all instances of "nvidia-current" with "nvidia-346" (It has to be replaced on 4 places in that file).

This, however, will still make the machine boot into a black screen. The problem is that the nvidia module is being loaded before the intel one. Bumblebee creates a file /etc/modules/modprobe.d/bumblebee.conf that blacklists nvidia-modules. This file, however, hasn't been updated in a while. Therefore, you must add the following to the end of this file:

# 346
blacklist nvidia-346
blacklist nvidia-346-updates
blacklist nvidia-experimental-346

After a reboot, you should be good to go. Of course, don't forget to change "346" to the number on the driver version you have installed.

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  • Thanks for taking the time to help! This worked without a problem :)
    – Timothy White
    Oct 31, 2015 at 14:59

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