How can I uninstall Nvidia proprietary drivers?

Question

OK, so I know that other people asked exactly the same... but I just moved from Nouveau to Nvidia using this tutorial, and the new drivers are really, really, really slow. How can I remove Nvidia drivers and recover the open ones?

Answer 1

1. If you added things to the blacklist, remove them now from the list with sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf
2. Now close your session and press Ctrl + Alt + F1 in the login menu.
3. Login with your username and password.
4. Run sudo stop lightdm, which will stop X11 (including the standard login menu!)
5. Now exec sudo nvidia-uninstall
6. Press Yes to restore from a backup.
7. You may find errors related with non-empty folders. Ignore them.
8. If you removed Nouveau, run sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-video-nouveau
9. Now you can finish with sudo reboot

Answer 2

I had a similar problem. Solved like this:

1. Boot as normal and get to login screen

2. press Ctrl+Alt+F1

3. Login with your username and password.

4. type sudo stop lightdm and press Enter, stops X11

5. type sudo apt-get purge nvidia* and press Enter - clears all nvidia items

6. type sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-video-nouveau and press Enter - will install this package or tell you if it is already there.

7. type sudo reboot

This got me back up and running (although no icons in Unity Launcher - since need correct graphic drivers) check system settings to search for Additional drivers to see if this can be addressed - although adding wrong drivers may cause the system to be faulty or freeze after login.