Unable to install/deinstall any programs due to Nvidia driver

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Kenneth1
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Posts: 24
Joined: Thu Jun 11, 2015 2:56 pm

Unable to install/deinstall any programs due to Nvidia driver

Post by Kenneth1 »

Apparently my nvidia driver is obsolete. One would think this would be no problem to uninstall an old driver and reinstall the latest. Well unfortunately, this isn't so simple. Whenever I try to install anything I am prompted to rund
sudo dpkg --configure -a

If I do that I get the following prompt:
Detected 8 CPUs online; setting concurrency level to 8.

If you plan to no longer use the NVIDIA driver, you should make sure that no X
screens are configured to use the NVIDIA X driver in your X configuration file.
If you used nvidia-xconfig to configure X, it may have created a backup of your
original configuration. Would you like to run `nvidia-xconfig
--restore-original-backup` to attempt restoration of the original X
configuration file?
[default: (N)o]:

Regardless of how I respond Y, N, Yes, or No, I the program then freezes. i could leave it alone for hours and nothing happens. So my computer is stuck. I can't install. I can't uninstall thanks to this stupid program. How do I get around this? Note, I've also tried shutting down mdm so it's just me and the command line and it still hangs.
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
kevinthefixer
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Posts: 280
Joined: Thu Jul 23, 2015 10:36 pm

Re: Unable to install/deinstall any programs due to Nvidia driver

Post by kevinthefixer »

Running LMDE2 Mate 64 with Nvidia driver, I've not had that problem, never seen the error message you report, so I'll just shoot in the dark. You might try uninstalling the proprietary driver and setting up X again, will require un-blacklisting the open-source driver (Noveau if I spelled it right). Uninstall procedure will depend on how you installed it. You might try simply hitting enter at that prompt, or not configuring dpkg at all. Does this problem occur when installing anything, or just the Nvidia driver? Is your system up-to-date? Are you installing from command line or Software Manager?
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