The suggested solution ( sudo dpkg-reconfigure nvidia-331 and sudo dpkg-reconfigure nvidia-331-uvm ) stopped the Unity launcher and top status bar from displaying, and hotkeys (such as CTRL-ALT-T ) wouldn't work.
I switched to tty1 ( CTRL-ALT-F1 ), logged in, and after lots of online reading discovered the following: * My linux version (found by using uname -or ) was 3.13.something. Apparently Ubuntu 14.10 (which is what I'm running) doesn't support that version (it's supposed to be 3.16.something). I've run the GUI-prompted updates every time they've appeared (every few days). I wonder how many other people out there are experiencing problems because of the same thing? * I upgraded my linux version ( sudo apt-get update then sudo apt-et install linux-generic ). * Then followed the instructions in this bug description ( sudo dpkg- reconfigure nvidia-331 and sudo dpkg-reconfigure nvidia-331-uvm ) and also reinstalled the packages ( sudo install nvidia-331 --reinstall and sudo nvidia-331-uvm --reinstall ). I'm not sure if this second step was necessary. Everything seemed to be compiling ok now. * Finally, I deleted the dpkg config file which seemed to think it was ok not to display the Unity launcher or status bar (or window dressing for that manner: ( sudo mv ~/.config/dconf/user ~/.config/dconf/user- old ) and then rebooted the system ( sudo reboot ). My (trying to be helpful) suggestions for the admins for this bug: 1) Please include some of the above details as a "how to fix" if things go wrong. It's taken me a whole day to return my system to a usable state. 2) Consider perhaps at some stage Ubuntu updates haven't upgraded from linux version 3.13.something and this is interfering with the nvidia packages (?) -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1268257 Title: nvidia-331-updates 331.38-0ubuntu3: nvidia-331-updates kernel module failed to build, with only error: "objdump: '... .tmp_nv.o': No such file" To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/nvidia-drivers-ubuntu/+bug/1268257/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
