[SOLVED] (NVIDIA) dreaded black screen | Arch Linux Community | Page 1

uneven quarry Feb 4, 2026, 1:17 PM

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(new to arch 🫠) So after installing 6.18.7 something in my installation imploded upon itself. The moment I tried to boot into my pc I was met with an i2c timeout error. I turn on pc, splash screen, then the standard linux text and then just a black screen with the cursor. I have normal access to tty, as well as a live USB at the ready.

I did try downgrading to .6, including the headers and drivers. Tried reinstalling kde-meta too. SDDM is enabled and running normally supposedly, and the drivers are properly recognised with nvidia-smi.

Gpu: gtx 1660
Drivers: nvidia-open-dkms 590.48.01
Kernel: 6.18.7
DE: KDE Plasma
Login manager: SDDM

Is there anything I could do other than reinstalling, in order to salvage this? Here's the exact error right below.
((Also i was gonna set up system image backups today before I realised I couldn't get in, the irony 😭 this is a p frenh install))

wind ether Feb 4, 2026, 5:32 PM

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A black screen does indeed indicate some sort of graphics issue. Can you run "journalctl -b | grep -i ".*wayland.*" in a tty and show the output?

uneven quarry Feb 4, 2026, 8:35 PM

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wind ether A black screen does indeed indicate some sort of graphics issue. Can you run "jo...

So apparently this isn't what was preventing me from getting into my system, but me stupidly having installed some sort of SDDM theme the other day. I just reset it to breeze and it worked and I learnt my lesson to not do that again 🧍

Thank you so much for offering your help either way though, I will mark this as solved now 🫶

fervent peakBOT Feb 4, 2026, 8:36 PM

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j3an__ received a thank you cookie!

uneven quarry Feb 4, 2026, 8:36 PM

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[SOLVED] (NVIDIA) dreaded black screen

#[SOLVED] (NVIDIA) dreaded black screen