No Unity dash and bars - existing solutions not working

Question

I am running Ubuntu 14.04 LTS x64 on a Schenker M504 (Clevo 650) Intel i7 4712 with NVIDIA GeForce GTX850M.

When switching to the NVIDIA card using PRIME, all my windows were surrounded by a thick black border. In an attempt to solve this issue I attempted to update the NVIDIA driver from 331.38 to 337.25 following the guide from dannyboy79 - Nvidia releases 337.25. I then rebooted only to find a black screen with a white cursor on the top left.

I attempted various things to solve this, including:

1) removing all nvidia drivers (solution 1):

sudo apt-get install --reinstall ubuntu-desktop
sudo apt-get install unity
sudo apt-get purge nvidia* bumblebee*
sudo apt-get install nvidia-prime
sudo shutdown -r

2) purging and resinstalling everything:

Remove everything to do with the Nvidia proprietary drivers.

sudo nvidia-settings --uninstall
sudo apt-get remove --purge nvidia*

Start from scratch.

sudo apt-get remove --purge xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv

Reinstall all the things!

sudo apt-get install nvidia-common
sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-video-nouveau
sudo apt-get install --reinstall libgl1-mesa-glx libgl1-mesa-dri xserver-xorg-core

Reconfigure the X server.

sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

Reinstall compiz

sudo apt-get install --reinstall compiz

Option 2) solved the issue but I now find myself with a blank Unity background. I have seen several people mentioning that the Unity plugin was disabled in ccsm. I have therefore followed all the solutions mentionned on Unity doesn't load, no Launcher, no Dash appears, but to no avail.

Running ccsm is mentioned in several potential answers, but everytime I try to launch ccsm, I get an error message:

/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/gtk-2.0/gtk/__init__.py:57: GtkWarning: could not open   display
warnings.warn(str(e), _gtk.Warning)
Traceback (most recent call last):
File"/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/ccm/__init__.py", line 1, in <module> from ccm.Conflicts import *
File"/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/ccm/Conflicts.py", line 26, in <module> from ccm.Constants import *
File"/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/ccm/Constants.py", line 30, in <module> CurrentScreenNum = gtk.gdk.display_get_default().get_default_screen().get_number()
AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'get_default_screen'

When I try to run:

dconf reset -f /org/compiz/ 

I get an error message: Cannot autolaunch D-Bus without X11 $DISPLAY. Similarly

setsid unity 

does not work either.

I have also attempted to reinstall lightdm, but the problem remains, and when attempting to boot using gdm Ubuntu just hangs at the loading display.

The problem is present on both my host and guest sessions.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Ok, so I managed to partially solve the issue (that is to revert to the original settings and dirver (Nvidia 331.79), but the black border issue remains) and wanted to let the community know in case anyone happens to encounter the same problem.

So in order to revert to the original settings I

1) purged all nvidia drivers:

sudo apt-get remove --purge nvidia*

2) Reinstalled Ubuntu desktop

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop

3) Reinstalled the nvidia driver through the xorg-edgers repository:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nvidia-331

I will keep looking into the black border issue, but have seen some posts on this so there must be an answer somewhere out there!

Hope this may help!