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I've been trying to setup my GeForce GTX 970 on my desktop. It used to work, and then I messed up something (unrelated issue) and decided I should start from scratch since the computer was still new so I re-installed Ubuntu 16.04. All I meant with this is that I have no hardware problem.

Everytime I plug in my GPU on my motherboard and turn my computer on, my screen stays entirely black during the whole process ; I do not get any kind of image during POST, boot, login, etc. This is particularly annoying since it prevents me from installing the drivers (I am assuming the graphic card has to be plugged in the computer for the drivers to be installed?). I've also been experiencing issues installing the drivers, but if my screen is on with the graphic card plugged in I assume I can figure my way back to a fully working computer.

I tried a lot of things up to now, but I'm still open to suggestions.

EDIT : Ok I feel really stupid not noticing before. My problem is not solved, but my screen is not actually black, there's just no video output. for some reason I thought there was output before but there never was. The monitor is plugged in the motherboard, not the graphic card (although both give me no output).

ADDED : if a solution involves re-installing Ubuntu, I'm okay with that. It's been re-installed several times today.

EDIT 2 : Attempted multiple solutions today, always after a fresh re-install. I am out of ideas. Googled everything I could google, tried mixing different solutions to adapt to my computer (most solutions out there do not match my exact computer specs), no success. I am posting my specs hoping that someone knows what to do.

Motherboard : GIGABYTE z170a CPU : i7 6700k GPU : NVIDIA GTX 970 (the one I am trying to install) Ubuntu 16.04

Please also add the part which confuses me a lot since the beginning : at what point during the installation of the drivers should I plug in my graphic card into my desktop, and is it normal that without a successful driver installation that my monitor gets no video output (I still get an audio output and manage to blindly activate commands from terminal such as shutdown). I am wondering since nvidia-installer tells me it can't detect modules, I thought maybe these are in the graphic card and cannot be detected because I didn't plug it in. But I am not sure.

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    Possible duplicate of My computer boots to a black screen, what options do I have to fix it?
    – Pilot6
    Jun 27, 2016 at 16:51
  • @Pilot6 : No (i.e. I have seen this answer before posting). Even without drivers, I should be able to turn my computer on with the graphic card plugged in and see something, anything. I don't see anything at all. No POST, GRUB, boot, login, nothing. When I unplug the graphic card I can do whatever I want. This causes a problem since installing the drivers requires the graphic card plugged in (or at least I get the error "Unable to load kernel 'nvidia.ko'" and one of the reasons listed for this error is that the graphic card is not plugged in. Jun 27, 2016 at 16:56
  • Not always the open source driver works. Boot with nomodeset and re-install the driver. And make sure that SecureBoot is disabled in BIOS.
    – Pilot6
    Jun 27, 2016 at 16:57
  • @Pilot6 : With or without the graphic card plugged in? Because with it I can't see anything, so this is not possible. Jun 27, 2016 at 17:01
  • I added an edit... -_- Jun 27, 2016 at 17:51

3 Answers 3

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I have solved my problem.

I first write the potential source of my problem, and in the next paragraph I explain my solution. I recall my specs here :

Motherboard : GIGABYTE z170a

CPU : i7 6700k

GPU : NVIDIA GTX 970 (the one I am trying to install)

OS : Ubuntu 16.04

Source of the problem : I had the graphic card running before, and an issue forced me to re-install the OS. This caused my BIOS to set the graphic card chosen for display during POST to be my NVIDIA card, which had no drivers anymore because I re-installed the OS. Therefore I would get a black screen and could not run my computer with the graphic card plugged in. Because I didn't recall how I setup my graphic card the first time, this lead me to think that I needed to plug in the graphic card AFTER installing the driver, but it goes the other way around ; you cannot install the driver without the graphic card plugged in.

Solution : I went into the BIOS, and indeed the graphic card selected for POST was the PCI slot I was using before for the graphic card. If this is the case, unplug the graphic card, for it will cause your monitor to get no video output, even if your monitor is plugged in your motherboard. In the BIOS of my motherboard (GIGABYTE GA-z170 Gaming K3), one must select "IGFX" instead of "PCI Slot 1" (or whatever slot was set there) as the graphic card selected for POST ; for a different motherboard, find the option which enables the integrated graphics of the motherboard, not the GPU's. Complete the boot, shutdown, plug in the graphic card and reboot. Your monitor should display nomrally.

I ran the following commands after a fresh install of my OS, but I assume they could also work if no NVIDIA drivers have been previously installed or if old NVIDIA drivers have been purged (via sudo apt remove --purge nvidia*)

In a terminal, enter the following commands :

  1. sudo apt update && sudo apt dist-upgrade (this is always good to do whether you're installing drivers or not, keeps your computer up to date)
  2. sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa
  3. sudo apt update
  4. sudo reboot (might not be necessary, but I didn't take any chances)

After logging in again, open a terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and enter the following command, where *** must be replaced by the version of the driver you want to install :

sudo apt install nvidia-***

In my case, I installed the latest (28/06/2016) driver, which is nvidia-367. So the command looked like this :

sudo apt install nvidia-367

To check that your graphic card is indeed being used to display graphics, go in the "About this computer" section (or System Settings -> Details) which should display "Graphics GeForce (...)" instead of "Graphics Intel (...)".

I have not tested other drivers. I have spent five days on this, so I guess I became a sort of medium expert on these issues...

Remark : I did not disable anything in the file /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf and did not add any extra file in there. I am guessing that the script installing nvidia-367 takes care of disabling nouveau, whereas when installing directly from the .run installer from nvidia.com, one must do this manually.

Hope that helps,

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Actually you have a default graphic card. For use latest driver you need go to painel configuration and going to software and update --> aditional driver and choice latest proprietary driver. This resolve all probleme with my graphic card

Good luck

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  • I didn't have to do this on my previous install, and furthermore my installed drivers don't appear there. Jun 27, 2016 at 17:18
  • Yu have 2 step to try: 1 -To get started, open Software & Updates from the Dash. Under the ‘Other Software’ tab, click the Add button and add below line into the pop-up dialog or other option 2- you can try if you Synaptic Package Manger” installed, you can search for and install nvidia-346 or the bigger number = version . I prefere the first step because you have stable choice
    – Arnaud
    Jun 28, 2016 at 11:21
  • I already tried adding the ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa but their driver nvidia-364 is useless ; I can install it but when I plug the graphic card in I get no video output. Before I had the need to re-install my driver (which I explained in the question), the graphic card was running fine with the nvidia driver 364 from nvidia.com. Jun 28, 2016 at 15:32
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That's my first post here, so hope to be clear enough and that'll help anybody running similar issues.

I've run onto almost the same problem, i.e. trying to install Ubuntu 16.04 with my GeForce GTX970 plugged in.

Here my personal specs:

  • MoBo: Gigabyte GA-Z97X-UD5H
  • CPU: Intel i7-4790K
  • GPU: Msi GeForce GTX 970 Gaming 4G

I personally have dual boot with 2 separate SSDs, one with Win10 and one for Ubuntu.

My problem is very similar to the one's of Patrick, i.e. Ubuntu won't display correctly on screen (i'm getting a total black screen) if my GPU is plugged in. The only possible option to run the Ubuntu installation for me was to physically unplug the GPU from my MoBo and to run the installation using the integrated Intel Graphics of my MoBo. After that I enabled the PPA for installing proprietary NVIDIA graphics drivers and rebooted this time with the GPU plugged in. This time, the Ubuntu OS has automatically selected the appropriate NVIDIA driver for me (I assume that's because I enabled the PPA, so now it did find the appropriate driver source), so I didn't have to install nothing manually. My install steps:

  1. Boot into BIOS and make sure that the integrated graphics of your motherboard is enabled, and that'll be also selected at startup. For my Gygabyte MoBo I hat to set "Initial Display Output" to "IGFX" and "Intel Processor Graphics" to "enabled" in the "Peripherals" tab.
  2. Turn off your PC and plug out the GPU from the motherboard. Make sure to connect the HDMI cable to the HDMI port of your motherboard (you should't have any other option as you have no GPU now attached).
  3. Install Ubuntu (now the display should be fine with no GPU installed).
  4. After finishing installation and reboot, enable the NVIDIA graphics driver PPA by entering (as pointed out by Patrick) sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa and then sudo apt-get update in a terminal window. Then shut down the PC.
  5. Now (this was a crucial step for me), always having the GPU unplugged, go back to the BIOS, and set the initial diplay output back to the PCI Express port (for me I had to select "PCIe 1 Slot"), make sure to save the settings and then shut down. If you don't do so and plug the GPU back in (at least in my case), I wasn't able anymore to go back to the BIOS (having the GPU plugged in and the initial output set to "IGFX", I was stuck in the POST screen on the MoBo HDMI and I had no video output on the GPU HDMI. Sounds like a bug on MoBo side.
  6. Now plug the GPU back in, switch the HDMI cable from the MoBo to the GPU port, and boot to Ubuntu. In my case, the drivers were installed automatically and everything went fine. If you go to the system settings, select "software and updates" and go to the "additional drivers" tab, you should see a list of available drivers, with one being selected per default.

Hope this helps!

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