Help me! Unknown Monitor / Nvidia issue / Compositor problem(?)

EDIT: Solution here: Help me! Unknown Monitor / Nvidia issue / Compositor problem(?)


Hi. Before I installed Ubuntu MATE 16.04.1 64bit, I was a Ubuntu Unity user where I did not have these issues…

I have a 1920x1080(60hz) that now is 1024x768(76hz) and I cannot change it to any other resolution.
It had my native resolution at first when I installed MATE and when I rebooted after all the updates being done from the Welcome screen, it turned into 1024x768 :frowning:

Also, when I bring up ‘Nvidia X Server Settings’, all it shows me is the “Application Profiles” and “nvidia-settings Configuration” tab.
(In the ‘Software & Updates’ I have set the Intel to microcode firmware and the nvidia to version 361.42 (proprietary, tested)).
I have a GTX 960 and i5 6500.

Also took a look at MATE Tweak window compositors and all I had was "Marco(No compositor) and “Marco(Software compositor)”. Or is it like that by default without compton and compiz?

Installed Steam and tried to run it and after it had updated it shows a message: OpenGL GLX extension not supported by display

If something wasn’t clear enough, please let me know and I’ll try to explain further!

This looks like something is wrong with your driver installation - that Steam error and the absence of Compton/Compiz in MATE-Tweak show that 3D acceleration is not working.
Check the troubleshooting section of the binary driver how-to.

I tried the Driver Not Active but I don’t really understand, how do you reboot X?

Also tried Low/Missing Screen Resolutions with:
xrandr --addmode S-video 1920x1080

It didn’t work. It gave me a message saying:
xrandr: Failed to get size of gamma for output default
xrandr: cannot find output “S-video”

I have even tried reinstalling MATE several times but with same result.

I did a clean install on Ubuntu 16.04.1 again and setup the additional drivers to it’s proprietary, rebooted and it worked flawlessly. I then again did a clean install on Ubuntu MATE 16.04.1, did the same thing and not working.
(Not dualboot)

It’s pretty sad actually as I was so tempted to use MATE. I really liked it but this problem really surprised me, I wish it wasn’t like this.
I’ll go back to Ubuntu Unity for now.

Hope there’s a solution somewhere, I couldn’t find it after searching for 6 hours.

Hi @WhyAreLess,

it looks to me that you somehow have (had) a broken install?, did you try running any of the “fix” terminal commands? (Ctrl + Alt + t):

sudo apt-get --fix-missing install

The above command downloads and installs any missing packages on your system.

sudo apt-get --fix-broken install

The above command downloads and installs any broken dependencies on your system.

Hi @wolfman ! It didn’t seem to do anything. I wrote the commands you gave me after the install of MATE, and also after applying changes to the drivers in Additional Drivers and also after the restart.

I only got this message:

Reading package lists… Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information… Done
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

Hi @WhyAreLess,

I assume that since you have done a fresh install; the commands won’t do anything?.

What type of media did you use to do your install?, if a disk, did you burn the disk at the slowest speed and if a USB install, did you fully format the USB drive first?. :smiley:

I installed through USB. I have tried the Direct Download and now the torrent download.

Both done with the Startup Disk Creator application.

I’m not too sure how to format the USB though. I might have to try that.
Can’t find the option anywhere to do so. :stuck_out_tongue:

EDIT: Is it safe to “Format Disk” the USB using the Disks application?

You basically just need to use Gparted (install if necessary) and fully format the USB stick to FAT32!.

To install via the terminal, use the following command (Ctrl + Alt + t):

sudo apt-get install gparted gpart

I get these messages when I start Gparted:

The driver descriptor says the physical block size is 2048 bytes, but Linux says it is 512 bytes.

My USB shows as unallocated. I don’t know how to print screen and send them on Ubuntu like in Windows but the /dev/sdc is there which is my USB.

Partition - File System - Label

/dev/sdc1 (!) - unknown - Ubuntu-MATE 16.04.1 LTS amd64
unallocated - unallocated
/dev/sdc2 - fat16
unallocated - unallocated

What is my next step? Which one of them do I format to fat32, the fat16 one?
Do I need to erase anything before I format to fat32. If so, which one? :slight_smile:

Ignore the warning and continue, you should delete all partitions with FAT32 but if you used the “Startup Disk Creator”, you might want to try formatting it under Windows if you have it on your PC!. :smiley: (I have had trouble with formatted USB sticks that were first done with Startup Disk Creator myself!).

I don’t have Windows (un)fortunately :wink: I used the Startup Disk Creator when I was on Ubuntu Unity.

I have deleted all partitions and made a new one, so it now looks like this:

Partition - File System - Size

unallocated - unallocated - 2.00MiB
New Partition #1 - FAT32 - 35.00MiB
unallocated - unallocated - 29.12GiB

It didn’t work to format to fat32 and this happened:

Partition - File System - Size

/dev/sdc1 - unknown - 126.00KiB
unallocated - unallocated - 1.88MiB
/dev/sdc2 - unknown - 40.00MiB
unallocated - unallocated - 29.12GiB

sdc1 is unchangeable and when I change sdc2 to FAT32 it gives me an error after applying operations that there’s no such file or directory.

Then use Startup Disk Creator again and it should auto-format the drive!.

If you can; I recommend that you download a fresh ISO and start completely from the beginning again!, that is of course up to you. If you do download a fresh ISO, download it from a different location than the last one you downloaded!.

Most likely the same as above?:

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-mate/releases/16.04/release/

You can also try Unetbootin but it requires a FAT32 pre-formatted USB stick!:

This sucks. Nothing works. I tried with FAT32 anyway and then without and then with partition to be unknown etc. I’m clueless on what to do.

My USB is UEFI so I cannot do the Unetbootin. :confused:

How come this only happens on MATE but not on Unity?

I am not quite sure what you mean by the above?, take a look at the UEFI section here:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/FromUSBStick

I will be back tomorrow afternoon but maybe someone else can help you too?. :smiley:

Solved!!! All I did was installing both the updates and Flash, MP3 etc before installation and turning off Secure Boot with the MOK Manager appearing after restart.
I won the fight, the PC can’t win over me lol :smiley:

I can finally use this awesome distro!

Thanks so much @wolfman and also @maximuscore for helping me.
You’re awesome! :smiley:

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