I want to install some drivers for my graphics card. usually when I do that something goes wrong, I then try to fix it, something else goes wrong. I finally end in failure and have a destroyed system and a non working driver.  I want to have something like a checkpoint, or a full system image as backup. something to go back to if I fail. is there any way to do something like this? how to make a backup image and how to restore it if needed?
44652
I'm a new Linux user. I've reinstalled my Wubi from scratch at least ten times the last few weeks because while getting the system up and running (drivers, , etc.) I've broken something (X, grub, unknowns) and I can't get it back to work. Especially for a newbie like me, it's easier (and much faster) to just reinstall the whole shebang than try to troubleshoot several layers of failed &quot;fixing&quot; attempts. Coming from Windows, I expect that there is some &quot;disk image&quot; utility that I can run to make a snapshot of my Linux install (and of the boot partition!!) before I meddle with stuff. Then, after I've foobar'ed my machine, I would somehow restore my machine back to that working snapshot. What's the Linux equivalent of Windows disk imagers like  or ?  Note: I found a similar question:
2918
I have an MSI Radeon HD 7850 card. MSI provide no Linux support, and the AMD driver gives me an Unsupported Hardware watermark that does not show up in screenshots.  I uninstalled the proprietary driver and found that Unity 3D no longer works, and I really only picked Ubuntu because of the excellent shortcuts provided in the recent versions.   Trying to locate the open source driver has been a pain for me. According to the documentation I have read it is pre-included in Ubuntu 12.04, yet there is no Unity 3D support. I tried using the newest drivers from AMD's website, but that also had the watermark.  Does anyone know how I can get the open source driver? If not, does anyone know how to remove the watermark. I'm on the verge of going back to Windows.
76191
I'm suffering from the dreaded . The problem is intermittent and can be "solved" by putting the computer to sleep or restarting it. I hope simply restarting the graphics drivers will remove the symptoms of the problem.  would seem to indicate that restarting the graphics drivers is possible in Windows 7. My question is: how?
44945
I was wondering how to list all the hardware info in my computer?   Both terminal and GUI solutions please. Is there a single utility to monitor most hardware's working status? Just like some software in Windows?   Thanks and regards!
4714
Is there a package of Ubuntu drivers as driver pack solution? I tried to search for it, but I did not find it. If there is, how can I easily get it?
85932
In Windows 7 you could create a system image that you restore later on in the Backup and Restore options:    However Backup and Restore options have changed in Windows 8. They look like this now:    Is it still possible to create a system image so that I can restore it later on or has this  feature been removed?
2025
I know of many ways to get a rough idea of my graphics card model. Here are two examples (instructions for Windows 7):  Method 1  1) Click start  2) Type dxdiag and press enter  3) Go to the Display tab and check the Name property.  Method 2  1) Click start  2) Right click on Computer and select Properties  3) Click on Device Manager  4) Expand the Display adapters to get a list of video cards  Problems  Unfortunately both these methods suffer from problems:  1) This is a very inaccurate measure. For example, if I have an ATI Radeon 4830, both methods will show that I have an ATI Radeon 4800 series i.e. there is no way to distinguish between different models within the 4800 series or any other series for that matter.  2) This is dependent on having the correct driver installed. If I have an incorrect driver installed, there is no way for me to find out what the correct driver should be.  Question  Is there any way for me to be able to determine the exact model of a graphics card without relying on having the correct driver installed. I realise there are ways to do this such as checking the documentation that comes with the computer or perhaps opening it up but I am interested in seeing if there is way of doing this with software.  Edit: Please note the requirements carefully. If the method relies on reading from the driver then it is ineligible.  If there is no program that can do this, is there a manual method? Some kind of website database etc?  Thanks!
100817
I have an older Nvidia video card and my PC crashes when installing the driver for the video card in Ubuntu 16.04. When I get to the login screen but no further: after entering my password, the system went into a loop and returned always back to the login screen [with funny stripes present].   How do I fix this problem?
98345
I have an Ethernet hardware on the mother board ( Boardcon family ethernet )  for some reason whenever the windows runs for 30+ mins the internet will disconnect itself. so i thought it was because of the driver and went to get a new lan card and installed, and uninstalled the driver of the old card.  but here is where the issue came up.. windows will always reinstall the driver on restart and then internet will drop due to the driver being there.  can anyway give me a suggestion to stop it from installing at all? and just leave it there as unknown device ?  I tried this but have no results.
27343
Does Time Machine backup system files, kernel files and other OS-related files?   I have corrupted system drivers and files and I want to do a fresh install of OS X but I also want to back up my applications, files and folders.   I wonder if I should go with Time Machine or manually backing up each file.
29187
If I want to make a backup of my entire OS (including but not just my home directory), how do I go about this?    Is it as simple as backing up everything in / and then when if I suffer a crash, just copying the files back over? Will this cover grub, and how do I actually do this when the system is inoperable?
108446
I am using the official nVidia driver because my card (GeForce 750 Ti) isn't yet supported by the Ubuntu one. Every time the kernel updates, my system breaks.  I've formatted my system two-three times because of kernel updates and today I decided to try to fix it. I tried to fix it with this method and surprisingly it works.   Switch to console (After waiting for the nVidia driver to crash, as it does when you switch consoles :p) Run a complete uninstall  sudo ./&lt;DRIVER&gt;.run -uninstall  Reboot and switch to the on-board card Update  sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get dist-upgrade  Reboot again Reinstall driver  sudo ./&lt;DRIVER&gt;.run  Reboot and switch back to the NVIDIA GPU   Is there a better/easier/faster way to update without going through all this?
24560
As I can remember, on old systems (Pentium II or III) it was not possible to boot and run the PC if the graphics card was missing (AGP cards were used in those days).    Many years from then, I'm using motherboards with integrated graphics and I have no experience related to this subject, the "graphics card" always was present.  Currently I intend to build a home/private "server" for my purposes and most of the motherboards I want to buy have no integrated graphics (AMD 870 or 970). I can take a normal graphics card from my friends for a few hours/days and use it when installing the necessary software.    Can I boot and run the PC without problems after I install everything I need and the graphics card is removed?  If a general answer cannot be given, at least some examples of manufacturers/MB series/MB models will be helpful.  I think it's obvious, but for completeness, I mean cheap desktop components and not real servers.
71372
I'm too spoiled by Windows utilities that take a digital snapshot of your entire drive, which you can then restore from in the event of a drive crash.  (e.g. like Time Machine for Mac OS X).  Is there a similar way of doing this in Linux?
2813
My PC has both Ubuntu and Windows 7 installed. I have installed all my drivers in Windows like Nvidia graphics, motherboard etc. Shall I install them in Ubuntu too?  I looked on the web for my Nvidia drivers and I have found a .run file. How could I install it on my Ubuntu?
122798
I am using the  ppa. I got an update dialogue today which stated that I can update my nvidia driver to 367.18 (~gpu16.04.6). I started the update just like every time, but it failed with  Failed to get unit file state for var-lib-snapd-lib-gl.mount  After rebooting, my graphics driver was broken and I was forced to go into recovery mode.  As usually when my Nvidia driver breaks, I just uninstall it with  sudo apt purge nvidia* to reinstall it clean afterwards.   Doing this in recovery mode uninstalled all except the nvidia-opencl-icd-367 package which failed with the error above.   Trying to manually uninstall this package ends with these errors:       Update @20160605 - Solution:  Following Videonauth's answer below solves the issue. Please go through all the steps and make sure to reboot after removing everything of NVIDIA via sudo apt purge nvidia* succeeded without issues and after reinstalling the driver via sudo apt install nvidia-367.  This shall get your driver working again.   If this does not help, try to manually remove all old xorg configs sudo rm /etc/X11/xorg.conf* &amp;&amp; sudo rm /etc/X11/xorg.conf and reinstall the driver again sudo apt install nvidia-367 --reinstall.  If this still does not let you log back in (Typical error: Logins screen --> password has been entered, enter pressed --> goes back to login screen) try completely removing your Nvidia driver again from by switching into text console from the logscreen with Ctrl+Alt+F1, login with you account name and password, donwload the appropriate driver for your graphics card from  within console, stop lightdm:  sudo service lightdm  Install Nvidia's binary driver using sudo ./NVIDIA-VERSION...  and reboot system:  sudo reboot now  System:  Ubuntu 16.04 64bit  Linux 4.4.0-22
54255
Wondered if it is possible to use  to  a display device as a stop-gap solution to artifacts left over from a graphics card malfunction?  In particular it leaves  very un-user-friendly:     I found out the hardware ID of my display adapter through device manager (below)    [(windows key + pause break) -> device manager -> display adapters -> right click your display adapter -> properties -> details -> hardware ids.]    I tried the commands (opened with admin privileges) devcon restart "PCI\VEN_1002" and devcon restart =display but it always come back with .  Is it even possible to restart the graphics card without a system reboot?