XOrg shows black screen and/or no backlight after installing Nvidia drivers

Question

I've tried to install the nvidia drivers on my Arch Linux / Antergos laptop since I noticed it has been using the built-in Intel HD Graphics. The graphics card in question is an NVIDIA GeForce 940MX.

Here's what happened when I tried to make things work:

sudo pacman -S nvidia nvidia-utils lib32-nvidia-utils nvidia-settings
sudo nvidia-xconfig
(reboot right here)
(find that screen goes black and the backlight off when I switch to TTY7 / x)
(switch to tty2)
sudo modprobe nvidia
(no output, things still don't work)
sudo prime-select nvidia
(apparently prime-select doesn't exist on my system for some reason
despite having nvidia-settings)
sudo pacman -R nvidia
sudo mv /etc/X11/xorg.conf.nvidia-xconfig-original /etc/X11/xorg.conf
(reboot right here)
(back to normal, still on Intel Graphics Card)

Could someone tell me how to make these drivers actually work? I had them working on Ubuntu prior to this (as a last resort after the last time I tried making them work on Arch/Antergos.)

Edit: I've got it working using optirun/primusrun and bumblebee, but I'd really prefer to just use it for everything, as I prefer quality over power management.

Answer 1

I've had black screen issues with these drivers before (using GTX 980 Ti, Arch Linux with latest everything and HDMI output). My findings from this week:

• The Nouveau drivers work, but I couldn't get them to do 4K at 60 Hz, unlike the proprietary drivers (might well be my fault, though). If you require less than that, I would simply follow their instructions and forget about the proprietary driver.
• The proprietary drivers work again after removing /etc/X11/xorg.conf and every trace of Nouveau. However, I am having issues with what appears to be the HDMI interface going "offline" for about a second randomly while watching full-screen video. This may or may not be related to the earlier issue.