NVidia driver, normal boot results in blank screen, recovery boot works fine

This could be fixed by adding the nomodeset value to the grub boot options. To do so open the file:

gksudo gedit /etc/default/grub

then look for the line GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"

The quiet splash options may or may not be there, and there may be additional options, don't touch those and add to the end of it nomodeset

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash nomodeset"

Save the file and exit gedit, then update grub's configuration in the following way:

sudo update-grub

Source: happened to me

Ok, so it seems this is actually less to do with the NVidia cards and more to do with the fact that I'm using an SSD as a system drive.

As I understand it, the problem is that it's trying to start lightdm before the video card has finished initializing or some such nonsense.

It's a big problem on Macs; https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topic/573252/linux/evo-push-buffer-channel-allocation-failed-is-back-as-usedplib-false-no-more-supported-with-325-15/4/

I've tried a LOT of fixes related to the EVO Buffer problem, but it seems that most of them don't work with Ubuntu.

Seems the only thing that works is to deliberately give the system time to catch up before trying to launch lightdm.

So, in /etc/init.d/lightdm.conf, locate the line that says:

exec lightdm

.. and simply change it to:

sleep 2
exec lightdm

It's an ugly, kludgy fix, but I have no idea how to go about telling lightdm to wait for the cards.

Incidentally, not sure what the fix for the xorg.conf file was, I'd read that copying it to /usr/lib/X11/xorg.conf.d was more reliable and that setting the screens using the Ubuntu display manager was more reliable.

I did both, one of them worked, but I couldn't tell you which one.