I had a similar issue on my Dell Precision M3800. (Black screen with nvidia drivers enabled, fine with Intel drivers, and the workaround of closing the lid worked.)
Turns out, it was caused by a buggy version of xserver-xorg-video-intel, which came from the xorg-edgers PPA repository. When I downgraded to the official Ubuntu version, everything worked fine. To downgrade to the official Ubuntu version, you need to find its version string. For me, on trusty, the latest official version string was "2:2.99.910-0ubuntu1.6", but you can find it for yourself with "apt- cache showpkg xserver-xorg-video-intel". Once you have the version string, do "apt-get install xserver-xorg-video-intel=VERSIONSTRINGHERE". You'll also want to "pin" the package to prevent upgrades from automatically installing the PPA's version in the future. To do that, create a file called /etc/apt/preferences.d/no-intel-ppa with the following contents: Package: xserver-xorg-video-intel Pin: release o=LP-PPA-xorg-edgers Pin-Priority: -1 -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Desktop Packages, which is subscribed to nvidia-graphics-drivers-331 in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1362848 Title: ubuntu 14.04 after install nvidia binary driver 331.89 black screen and freeze Status in nvidia-graphics-drivers-331 package in Ubuntu: Confirmed Status in nvidia-graphics-drivers-340 package in Ubuntu: Confirmed Status in nvidia-graphics-drivers-346 package in Ubuntu: Confirmed Bug description: I'm using Ubuntu 14.04 64bit, after install nvidia binary driver 331.89 from Additional Drivers application then reboot, it shows black screen, no login window, I even can't use ctrl+alt+F2 to switch to text mode, then I reboot and go to recovery mode, use 'prime-select intel' to switch to intel GPU and reboot, everything is fine, but as soon as I switch to nvidia GPU, still same issue. OS: Ubuntu 14.04 64bit Laptop: HP ENVY 15t Nvidia GeForce GT 740M + Intel HD 4600 Desktop: Unity Kernel: 3.13.0 CPU: Intel® Core™ i7-4700MQ Thanks! To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nvidia-graphics-drivers-331/+bug/1362848/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages Post to : desktop-packages@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp