Loading freezes after removing nvidia graphics card

I want to switch to integrated Intel graphics with my computer and remove the Nvidia graphics card completely. It's an HP desktop running Ubuntu 18.04. When I remove the card I can see the Ubuntu loading screen but it freezes, even the mouse stops moving. The freeze happens right after the mouse cursor appears.

When I started in recovery mode I was able to see the login screen. It freezed again after entering my password.

I thought initially the issue is having Nvidia drivers installed. But even after uninstalling these with apt purge nvidia* nothing changed.

When I put the Nvidia graphics card back everything works fine.

I'd like to know what it might be and how to debug the issue. I'm pretty sure reinstalling the OS would help but I'd like to avoid that if possible.

Edit:

So far I have switched to lightdm - gdm3 will always freeze, depending on grub configuration either before or after login. Thanks @heynnema

I have edited grub at startup to remove quiet splash and added nomodeset. If spash is there or nomodeset is not the login screen will freeze or I get a black screen. Thanks @heynnema

Also at grub startup I have to remove the gfxmode line to get good performance. Figured that one out by comparing grub setup for normal and recovery mode.

I followed how to restore default graphic driver configuration to create /etc/X11/xorg.conf with Section "Device" Identifier "Card0" Driver "intel" Option "AccelMethod" "sna" EndSection. With that and not using nomodeset I don't get black screens but the login screen will always freeze.

By making nomodeset and gfxmode permament in grub I could have a perfectly working computer. I understand however that it's a hacky solution and not recommended.

Output of dpkg -l | grep -i nvidia:

rc libnvidia-compute-390:amd64 390.77-0ubuntu0.18.04.1 amd64 NVIDIA libcompute package
rc libnvidia-compute-390:i386 390.77-0ubuntu0.18.04.1 i386 NVIDIA libcompute package

I have since removed both packages, made no difference.

Edit 2:

I have now installed Windows 10 without issues. So the combination of my new setup and Ubuntu is never going to work properly.

In case anyone cares about the hardware setup, according to Speccy the CPU is an i7 3770K with Intel HD Graphics 4000 and the motherboard is PEGATRON CORPORATION 2AD5. I've installed 32 GB DDR3 RAM.

I'm going to switch computers soon and try Ubuntu on very similar hardware. If that also fails I might have to stick to Windows... which would suck.

2 Answers

You may have a problem with an older computer, with an older GPU. Try this...

• boot to recovery mode
• choose root access

type:

sudo mount -o remount,rw / # to remount the disk r/w
sudo pico /etc/gdm3/custom.conf # edit this file

change:

#WaylandEnable=false

to:

WaylandEnable=false

Then reboot.

Update #1:

Edit your GRUB boot command, find "quiet splash" and change it to "nomodeset", and see if it boots. The resolution will be off. If it freezes, observe the text you'll see on the screen for clues as to why it's freezing.

Update #2:

Lets try and change the display manager.

Boot into Recovery Mode, root access.

sudo mount -o remount,rw / # to remount the disk r/w

sudo dpkg-reconfigure lightdm # choose lightdm

reboot # reboot the computer

Note: later, if you need to switch back to gdm3 display manager...

sudo dpkg-reconfigure gdm3 # switch back to gdm3

I have replaced the entire computer with very similar specs and from the same era, no more issues. Ubuntu simply doesn't work with that 2013 HP ENVY Phoenix desktop hardware after removing the dedicated graphics card.