Black screen when I activate Nvidia drivers

guillaumedpr

Hi, I’m new to batocera and I’m facing some issues.

I have a laptop with an Intel Core i7-4710HQ, a NVIDIA GeForce 820M, 4gb of ram and 1To HDD.

The issue is that I can’t enable the nvidia drivers. When I remove the “#” before “nvidia-driver=true” in the batocera-boot.conf file, batocera will boot normally but in SYSTEM -> INFORMATIONS, OpenGL versions mentions MESA instead of Nvidia. And as soon as I try to activate Nvidia drivers for hybrid laptop I’m getting a black screen.

Does that mean that my geforce 820m isn’t compatible with batocera ?

Thank you

Atari

It’s always the laptops…
Would you have the model number for it?
In the meantime you can try out the legacy builds at https://mirrors.o2switch.fr/batocera/x86_64/nvidia-legacy/ to see if those work instead.

guillaumedpr

Hi !

Thanks for your quick response.

The model number of the laptop is ASUS R510JD-XX030H.

I tried with the file you sent but it doesn’t work either, I’m still facing that black screen issue…

When pressing ctrl + alt+ f3, this message pops up : https://zupimages.net/viewer.php?id=21/35/ucvt.jpg

Atari

Not even the legacy drivers work? Hm… that’s concerning. Is there a setting in your BIOS that could be preventing it? Something like “Enable on-board graphics output” which is disabling your GPU.

Did Windows work fine with the GPU before trying out Batocera?

guillaumedpr

I can’t find anything similar to “enable on-board graphic output” in the bios. I did a bios update but it didn’t change anything

Yes, in windows everything is working fine, the graphic card appears in the device manager and all its drivers are up to date

Atari

Welp I’m out of ideas, sorry. Good luck finding a solution.
Hopefully someone else with more knowledge can assist. You can always check out the Discord/Reddit communities as well.

guillaumedpr

I’m thinking i might have not installed the legacy build well.

I flashed batocera-x86_64-31-20210626.img.gz on my USB, but what am I suppose to do with the 4 other files ?

batocera-x86_64-31-20210626.img.gz.md5
batocera.version
boot.tar.xz
boot.tar.xz.md5

I can’t find anything about it in the wiki

Atari

You’re good, if you’ve flashed the image then that’s all you need. The other files are for if you’d like to do a manual upgrade/downgrade from an already existing installation.

guisilver

Did you guys find a solution for this issue?

joinski

guisilver

what’s the hardware (exact GPU-model) you are using? and did you already try different versions of batocera? (older versions + nvidia legacy versions, with and without nvidia-drivers activated)

bato_QA

On my laptop Lenovo Thinkpad Edge with Intel graphics and Nvidia 740 GPU Batocera 35 works fine with Nvidia setting activated. But on Batocera 36 the same setting “nvidia-prime=true” the screen remains black after the first Batocera screen / logo. But if I disable this setting it boots up completely but the quality of the game graphics is horrible and the performance also. Some games set up on 35 for Nvidia now after the update to 36 show an error message that they need need Nvidia or it is not possible to run it in Intel graphics. How can I fix that issue?

jon

bato_QA

I think the solution is to downgrade drivers under windows.

I had exactly the same problems on several towers (LGA775, LGA1155 and now on an LGA1366), with different versions of batocera and even by changing the driver parameters in the boot.cfg (true/prime): I systematically obtained a black screen with a GT610 or a GT710 (even with batocera.plus too).

Never having dug deep, yes because I removed my CG and I never had a black screen again, but I think you are trying to use old drivers on newer drivers installed on your machine .

Try once to put the drivers you ask for under linux: also update them under windows.
Then when you have finished installing your drivers, try a fresh install without changing anything.

(I invite you to try anyway without a graphics card, because if it’s like with mine: I5 2500 …. you get very good results with the basic drivers, if in addition you have an excellent proc you must have a very good instruction set on this side.)

JON

Sorthious

jon ,

Batocera(Linux) is it’s own Operating System, so Windows drivers will have no effect on how Batocera operates; or doesn’t. For whatever reason, laptops seem to suffer with this issue. Especially laptops with both iGPU’s and dedicated GPU’s.

jon

Sorthious

yes, except that it is totally false, since batocera recognizes your own drivers installed under linux! (see control panels, then system)
Your drivers are well recognized by batocera, because it is an emulation program and not “a system such as a windows OS”.

For having done the tests (and more than 5 years of testing, so some are still in progress), I tell you that my drivers are well recognized, and I get better results without a graphics card;) (so much so that PS2 turns without problem ;) )

I explain to you that I had successively “black screen”, with or without the batocera drivers activated, and this on any version …… because I was under drivers higher than 390. and 470, so I removed my CG and removed my drivers so that my processor could take over….quite simply.

And since V31 I no longer need CG with this pc (my HD Intel drivers and drivers are equivalent to a GT710 or maybe a 1030)

People who don’t have windows installed don’t have the basic drivers, that’s why the basic 390 and 470 have been included…..but all people with windows: necessarily have a version of drivers and updated drivers, and are therefore automatically higher than the 390 and the 470 ….. you can check several posts: they confirmed to me to be right after having tried and after the person also withdrew his card chart

JON

batQAcera

jon Hmmm …. I have a similar issue like bato_QA.

Your instruction sounds a bit odd in my case. I have notebook with Intel GPU and Nvidia. I have the latest and final Nvidia driver installed and not changed since years. There are no support and updates for this old Nvidia GPU.

I have 2 identical ssd / M.2 USB 2TB drives. On the one there is Batocera 35 and on the other Batocera 36.

Enabling Nvidia Prime in the configuration file on both drives and booting from 35, Nvidia GPU is recognized and main.

But if I boot from 36, I see a black screen. Question: Why? Why changing or removing something, that is working fine on old version? Why no fall-back or compatibility mode for older Nvidia GPUs?

jon

batQAcera

No idea, I also had the same question…

In your case:
1) are you sure and certain that your pilots and drivers have not had an update?

2) some laptops (eg lenovo dual cor) no longer have updates, yet after installing a windows on it I got much better results, mine was blocked under xp, and put W7 to correct the affair.

3) I wonder if you wouldn’t have a batocera boot conflict for your 2 disks (like for windows for example), if on V35 it worked, there’s no reason in your case that on V36 it wouldn’t does not work.

4) have you tried both methods for V36? (by taking a new image here on the site, and then trying to upgrade to V35?) both methods don’t give the same result on some PCs (why I don’t know).

Jon

batQAcera

jon 1) Yes. It is a notebook with Windows 10 64 bit. Windows gets its regularly updates. But no Nvidia driver updates.

2) I have clean installed Windows 10 64 bit on that old notebook and the latest final Nvidia driver.

Version:425.31

^WHQL^Release Date:2019.4.11

Operating System:Windows 10 64-bit

Language:English (US)

File Size:553.12 MB

3) That is exactly what I thought. But unfortunately on V36 the enabling of the option “Nvidia prime” leads to a black screen but disabling it leads to a successful boot.

4) Yes, I have. That is the reason why I have two identical USB drive. I have tested V35 clean installed on both drives and booting from them with enabled and disabled “Nvidia prime” on the notebook is working fine. Updated one to V36 and only with disabled “Nvidia prime” it boots successfully. Then I have wiped that V36 drive and did a clean installation of V36 and again same result.