Linux Mint: Updated My Nvidia Drivers, My Second Monitor and nvidia-settings Stopped Working

Question

I have a laptop running Linux Mint MATE, with two monitors connected to it, one via a USB hub and one directly. My graphics card can only handle two monitors at a time, but up until now that was fine: I could make both my external monitors work by disabling my laptop monitor.

However, I just made the mistake of doing updates and checking all of the boxes, which included Nvidia drivers. After the reset my computer refuses to even see the monitor that's connected through the USB hub. On top of that, I can't even run nvidia-settings; if I do I get:

ERROR: Unable to load info from any available system

I've tried using the Driver Manager to switch to every NVidia driver, and to the open source one, but that hasn't helped. I also tried running sudo nvidia-xconfig, but it tells me that doesn't exist. I also tried running nvidia-detector (it just says "none"), and running sudo prime-select nvidia (which I guess helped some people fix their nvidia-settings, but not me).

Can anyone help me get my two monitor setup working again?

Answer 1

Well I found a "fix", but it's more of a patch than an actual solution. What I did was remove all of the Nvidia Prime-related packages:

• bbswitch-dkms
• bumblebee
• bumblebee-nvidia
• nvidia-prime
• nvidia-prime-applet
• primus

I also removed a bunch of other other Nvidia packages that I think were all related to specific driver versions (libcuda1-390, nvidia-390, nvidia-opencl-icd-390) and a couple other random Nvidia packages (libnvtt2 and nvidia-settings).

When I booted back up my computer started recognizing both monitors again, and I was even able to switch back to the nvidia-390 driver (if I went back to 396 the second monitor stopped working again).

The only problem is, now my computer's CPU is overloaded, and I think it's because my Nvidia graphics card isn't being used. So really this is more of a stopgap solution, and I'd welcome (and happily accept) an answer that let's me use my Nvidia card.