Arch Linux

Viorlem

Member

Registered: 2025-08-10

Posts: 3

The system freezes/does not respond when using nvidia

Hi,

I have been using Arch Linux on my main computer for half a year, but I recently bought a laptop and wanted to install Arch on it as well. 

After installation, I encountered a strange problem that I can't even describe specifically. When using my Nvidia video card in any way, for example, even by running nvidia-smi, the tty console simply freezes and stops responding. Sometimes, I can't even switch to another tty. Similarly, I can't run any graphics. When I start xorg, I get an endless wait for a connection from the x server, and when I start something on wayland, the console freezes, similar to the case with nvidia-smi. Using nvidia in modules breaks the system launch.

After several dozen hours, I am leaning towards a non-working driver. I have already tried a lot of things and seen a large number of similar situations, especially on a laptop with Intel integrated graphics + nvidia, but I have not achieved anything.

Initially, my goal was to run graphics on the processor's graphics core and use the video card via prime-run, but now it's clear that I would like to use the video card somehow.

My laptop:
Intel Core i5-12600H + integrated graphics
GeForce RTX 4050 for laptops

I apologize if this is a rather trivial question or if the answer is extremely simple...

Viorlem

Member

Registered: 2025-08-10

Posts: 3

Re: The system freezes/does not respond when using nvidia

Actually, I've been dealing with this problem for quite some time, and this thread was created not out of haste, but out of helplessness. So, here's what I came up with after a few hours. I completely banned anything from nvidia from loading by blacklisting it. I created something like disable-nvidia.conf in /etc/modprobe.d and wrote the following there

blacklist nvidia
blacklist nvidia-drm
blacklist nvidia-modeset
blacklist nvidia-uvm

The laptop launched graphics on the processor's built-in core, and everything worked. It just so happened that now I really use the system on Intel graphics, and I can launch the video card through prime-run.

Obviously, the problem was that the graphics were trying to use the dormant video card, even when I ran everything through prime-run.

I would appreciate a more correct solution for this workaround.

Last edited by Viorlem (2025-08-10 11:51:01)

devrandom42

Member

Registered: 2025-08-10

Posts: 2

Re: The system freezes/does not respond when using nvidia

Are you using suspend by any chance? I had this exact problem after suspend and seems like I've fixed it for now.

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Viorlem

Member

Registered: 2025-08-10

Posts: 3

Re: The system freezes/does not respond when using nvidia

If I'm not mistaken, I definitely tried to use this somehow, but it didn't work.

As I mentioned above, the only thing that helped was completely ignoring the video card by blacklisting the drivers. This way, the system does not try to access the dormant video card unsuccessfully and runs on the processor graphics. Next, by entering the xorg or wayland session, I can run prime-run to use the video card.

Last edited by Viorlem (2025-08-11 16:17:48)

seth

Member

From: Don't DM me only for attention

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 69,258

Re: The system freezes/does not respond when using nvidia

Can you still properly shutdown the system after "freezing" it, in doubt by frenetically pressing ctrl+alt+del or using the entire REISUB dance of https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Keyboa … el_(SysRq)  ?
In that case, please post your complete system journal for the previous (frozen) boot:

sudo journalctl -b -1 | curl -F 'file=@-' 0x0.st

after the reboot.

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