[SOLVED] No graphics drivers unless I boot in recovery mode

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LM 20.2 Cinnamon. A couple days ago, I was away from my laptop longer than expected, and my battery ran down. The machine shut itself down at some point. Since then, when I power up the laptop and boot LM, the screen resolution is 640 x 480 and a warning comes up that no graphics drivers are operating. It suggests that I run the driver manager. I have done that, and it finds that the correct Nvidia driver is installed.
If I reboot and choose the advanced boot options for LM, I can boot the first recovery mode option. When LM comes up, it is in normal resolution (1600 x 900).
When I shut down from running in recovery mode, there are a bunch of messages, far more than usual, that flash by on the screen.
I have not found any other problems, just the necessity of booting recovery. I sort of expected the recovery settings to stick, but apparently not, I have to boot in recovery every time or face the 640x480 screen.

So how do I go about diagnosing & fixing this?
The following details are from inxi in recovery mode:

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CPU: Quad Core Intel Core i7 Q 840 (-MT MCP-) 
speed/min/max: 1210/1199/1867 MHz Kernel: 5.4.0-94-generic x86_64 Up: 39m 
Mem: 2840.5/15941.3 MiB (17.8%) Storage: 931.51 GiB (13.5% used) Procs: 247 
Shell: bash 5.0.17 inxi: 3.0.38 

Graphics:
  Device-1: NVIDIA GF106M [GeForce GT 445M] driver: nvidia v: 390.144 
  Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.13 driver: nvidia 
  unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,nouveau,vesa resolution: 1600x900~60Hz 
  OpenGL: renderer: GeForce GT 445M/PCIe/SSE2 v: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 390.144 

[Pjotr]

Restore a Timeshift snapshot dating from before the problems and test.

If successful, apply all updates and test again. When successful again: problem gone. If not: try to pinpoint the update that causes the problems (my guess: the kernel). Then restore the successful snapshot again, blacklist the rogue update and apply all other updates.

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I am reluctant to restore the Timeshift snapshot because I had done a lot of work installing new things since the last snapshot. I had installed VirtualBox and an Oracle VM, and did work in the database. I also shutdown and restarted after all that, so I do not believe it is related to my problem. I am not entirely sure what Timeshift backs up, but would it require me to start over with all that work?

Meanwhile, here are what seem to be the relevant sections from inxi while running in the VGA mode (not booted recovery):

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System:
  Kernel: 5.4.0-94-generic x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 9.3.0 
  Desktop: Cinnamon 5.0.7 wm: muffin dm: LightDM 
  Distro: Linux Mint 20.2 Uma base: Ubuntu 20.04 focal
  
  Graphics:
  Device-1: NVIDIA GF106M [GeForce GT 445M] vendor: Dell driver: nvidia 
  v: 390.144 bus ID: 02:00.0 chip ID: 10de:0dd2 
  Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.13 driver: fbdev,modesetting,nouveau 
  unloaded: vesa resolution: 640x480~73Hz 
  OpenGL: renderer: llvmpipe (LLVM 12.0.0 128 bits) v: 4.5 Mesa 21.0.3 
  compat-v: 3.1 direct render: Yes 

I don't see anything different except the resolution!

[Rotavator]

Update: I restored the last Timeshift snapshot from before the abnormal shutdown. When the system rebooted, it was in normal (1600 x 900 ) resolution, and the new programs I had installed were still there. Hooray?

Not so fast. After the next shutdown and power up, LM again came up in VGA 600x480 mode and tells me I have no hardware graphics acceleration, etc. If I try to change screen resolution in preferences -> display, no other resolutions are available. The only way to get 1600x900 is to reboot and use advanced options to pick recovery.

Unless Timeshift does system updates as part of its reboot process, there were none. Update manager said my system was up to date. (There are now 2 updates available.) This would seem to me to rule out any system updates as the source of the problem.

Is there some way to save the system configuration that I have when I boot with the recovery option, so that it will stick around for the next regular reboot?

[SMG]

Update: I restored the last Timeshift snapshot from before the abnormal shutdown. When the system rebooted, it was in normal (1600 x 900 ) resolution, and the new programs I had installed were still there. Hooray?

Not so fast. After the next shutdown and power up, LM again came up in VGA 600x480 mode and tells me I have no hardware graphics acceleration, etc. If I try to change screen resolution in preferences -> display, no other resolutions are available. The only way to get 1600x900 is to reboot and use advanced options to pick recovery.

It is possible your problem is similar to the one in this topic [SOLVED] NVIDIA driver failing sometimes on boot ("no hardware acceleration"). Let us know if the fix roblm recommends in the second post addresses the issue for you.

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Thanks @SMG! That does look like it did the trick, but I will give it a few more reboot cycles before declaring victory.

I am a little puzzled by the solution -- we're just loading the nvidia stuff earlier in the boot process, right? But we didn't remove any instructions to load the nvidia stuff from wherever it was later in the process. In my mind, that suggests that an attempt will occur later to load it when it is already loaded ...

[SMG]

I am a little puzzled by the solution -- we're just loading the nvidia stuff earlier in the boot process, right?

Correct. We want to make sure it is loaded and ready when X Server starts. What seems to be happening is nouveau gets ready faster than nvidia and if nouveau is ready but nvidia is not yet ready, X Server loads the nouveau display driver. That is what your data showed.

Graphics:
Device-1: NVIDIA GF106M [GeForce GT 445M] vendor: Dell driver: nvidia
v: 390.144 bus ID: 02:00.0 chip ID: 10de:0dd2
Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.13 driver: fbdev,modesetting,nouveau
unloaded: vesa resolution: 640x480~73Hz
OpenGL: renderer: llvmpipe (LLVM 12.0.0 128 bits) v: 4.5 Mesa 21.0.3
compat-v: 3.1 direct render: Yes

But we didn't remove any instructions to load the nvidia stuff from wherever it was later in the process. In my mind, that suggests that an attempt will occur later to load it when it is already loaded ...

Some people have been able to just restart X Server when they get the initial low resolution and often (but not always) that will correct the situation. By the time you would manually restart X Server then both nvidia and nouveau are ready. When both are ready, nvidia gets priority.

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Thanks again; marking this solved. I somehow didn't see the difference in what driver was loaded when I read the system report under recovery and under normal boot. I should have made the print bigger by switching to a lower screen resolution ...