NVIDIA: Black screen after an update

Difficulty level:

⭐⭐

In case of a NVIDIA driver update and after reboot, you only see a black screen, follow this guide to how downgrade the NVIDIA driver.

1. Open a Terminal

2. Go to /var/cache/pacman/pkg by typing the following command:

PS> Set-Location /var/cache/pacman/pkg

1. Now, lookup the correct package to downgrade, there are 3 to view:

   • nvidia-dkms

   • nvidia-utils

   • nvidia-settings

   You can search the version to downgrade by going on the following websites:

https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/packaging/packages/nvidia-utils/-/commits/maingitlab.archlinux.org

GitLab website for the NVIDIA Utils package

1. Now that you located the version, type the following command:

PS> sudo pacman -U nvidia-dkms.123-4 nvidia-utils.123-4 nvidia-settings.123-4

1. Reboot the system when finished.

Congratulation you downgraded the NVIDIA Drivers!