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I was trying to play some games on my computer and had graphics problems. I only have the on-board graphics (no graphics card added yet) but some of the games were extremely basic and still wouldn't run. I checked the drivers since I figured this may be the issue. Every single graphics driver in the listing was disabled, so I enabled a Nvidia one that was already installed on the machine, a HP dx2450.

On rebooting, what would normally take 45 seconds ended up being a blank screen after passing the blue hp screen before getting to the splash login screen. My monitor timed out and went into sleep mode as a result.

Restarting it I can get into grub via a series of keys I found online, but as this is my first time with this particular issue I'm not sure how to fix it. I'd rather not reinstall the system unless absolutely necessary, especially since this was an OEM install by HP.

Don't know how this information could help, but as I already know from most tech forums that it will be asked:

HP dx2450 2.3 GHz Dual-Core CPU 2 Gb DDR2 Ram 80 Gb Hard-Drive No PCI x16 Graphics Card in slot. On-Board graphics only at present.

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Your issue is that despite not having a discrete graphics card you decided to activate an NVidia driver. This is a driver for a card you don't have and so is causing issues. You did not explain how you "activated" this driver so I can only assume you used some kind of helper program. This probably created an /etc/X11/xorg.conf file which is now set to use the wrong driver. The end result will be a system with no working GUI.

If you can get to GRUB, try booting into a rescue system. There should be an option for this in your GRUB menu already. Once there, give your password to login, then run

sudo mv /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.bak

That will rename the xorg.conf file, if you are lucky, that's all that is needed and rebooting will bring your normal system back.

If that does not work, let us know, there are other things you can try.

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  • It has an NVidia chipset, which is why I had activated it, since it seemed to have -no- driver for it active in the driver listing, hence why I enabled it. The program was just the system's preinstalled driver control. Regardless, this seemed to work, and was much appreciated.
    – Caduceus
    Commented Nov 12, 2013 at 18:59
  • @Caduceus OK, you stated in your question that " I only have the on-board graphics (no graphics card added yet)" by which I understood that you had no other graphics card. By the way, if this solved your problem, please remember to mark it as accepted so that the question can be marked as answered.
    – terdon ♦
    Commented Nov 12, 2013 at 19:01
  • Right, but if there was no graphics chipset on the motherboard it's be purely terminal. Anyhoo, sorry I'm new to Stack Exchange, didn't hover over the check-mark until after seeing your latest comment. Just got back from work.
    – Caduceus
    Commented Nov 13, 2013 at 6:43

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