9/6/2017 xorg - How to fix "The system is running in low-graphics mode" error?

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How to fix The system is running in low-graphics mode error?

Note:

This is an attempt to create a canonical question that covers all instances of "low-graphics mode" error that occurs to a user, including but
not limited to installation of wrong drivers, incorrect or invalid lightdm greeters, low disk space, incorrect installation of graphics card like
ATI and Nvidia, incorrect configuration of xorg.conf file while setting up multiple monitors among others.

If you are experiencing the "low-graphics mode" error when trying to login but none of the following answers work for you, please do ask a
new question and then update the answers of this canonical question as and when your new question gets answered.

When I try to boot into my computer, I am getting this error:

The system is running in low-graphics mode

Your screen, graphics cards, and input device settings could not be detected correctly. You will need to configure these yourself.

How do I fix the failsafe X mode and login into my computer?

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9/6/2017 xorg - How to fix "The system is running in low-graphics mode" error? - Ask Ubuntu
Answer index:

The greeter is invalid

xorg lightdm login-screen unity-greeter

edited Apr 13 at 12:25 community wiki

6 revs
jokerdino

What happens when the message you see here is almost impossible to read? And I can forget about being able to
see the terminal in the Ctrl-Alt-F1 trick. Adrian Keister Jun 6 '13 at 16:23

I tried to add to the master question but apparently am too much of a newb to be useful. peejaybee Sep 29 '13 at
0:26

ok i tried everything on this page, but the fix for me was to make some more room. "df -h" showed sda1 as 100% so
then i run "du / | sort -g" and found trash was like 30gig... 80% of harddrive, so i did "rm -fr ~/user/.blah/trash" and
followed up with another df -h showing 14%, so a final reboot and i was back in. scott Jan 18 '14 at 6:24

@Braiam I realize this is old, but... this question is protected. It's pretty obviously visible. nyuszika7h Mar 15 '15 at
0:17

I had the same problem but i fixed it from this link thegeekyland.blogspot.com/2014/07/ubuntu-1404-lenovo-g510.html
Arlind Aug 2 '15 at 8:01

40 Answers

1 2 next

Will try to answer the ones I can:

Assuming the answer by Jokerdino was already checked: The greeter is invalid

Issues with Nvidia or AMD/ATI graphics

This happens when a driver has a problem installing correctly (Most cases). For this do the
following:

1. Boot PC leaving SHIFT pressed to make the GRUB Menu show.

2. Select Recovery Mode which will continue booting correctly until the Recovery Menu
appeares.
3. Select from the recovery menu failsafeX.

4. In some cases failsafeX will load fine (You lucky dog), for others (Me) it will give an error
along the lines of "The system is running in low-graphics mode" and will stay there forever.
When this happens, press CTRL + ALT + F1 to go to the terminal. Type in your
Username and Password.

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5. Reinstall the drivers depending on your case:

Nvidia

sudo apt-get install nvidia-current - More stable/tested version sudo apt-get

install nvidia-current-updates - More up-to-date version

For other cases see this answer for details and follow the links there to help you along
the way.
AMD/ATI

The simple way is to sudo apt-get install fglrx . If this does not work keep reading.

Go to AMDs support site and download the driver you need. (If you have a newer
card, you may want to download be the latest beta driver instead of the stable one.
You would need to compare release dates and read through release notes to find out
which driver version supports which chips.) Put the downloaded driver in some folder
and rename it to "amd-gpu.run" to simplify name. Go to the folder where you
downloaded the file and type chmod +x amd-gpu.run to give it Executable Permission.
Now just simply run ./sh amd-gpu.run and follow the onscreen steps.

After rebooting all problems should be solved. If you test 'Additional Drivers' with a
problem like this it will finish downloading the package but then it will give an error. It
also gives the same error if you use 'Software Center' and 'Synaptic'. The only way
was to go to the failsafeX option and do the workaround about changing to the
tty1 terminal and doing it via command line.

Note that if the problem occured after installing an unsupported driver from the amd site then
you may have to first delete the driver you had installed. For this, run in the tty session (i.e) in
the terminal screen you get after pressing CTRL + ALT + F1 :

sudo aticonfig --uninstall

(If this command didnt work then check this site . Look under the "Uninstalling the AMD
Catalyst Proprietary Driver" heading.) After doing this, you may reboot with the command :

sudo shutdown -r now

Now you must get back access to the Unity desktop(Of course with the AMD driver
uninstalled). Then you can get to this site which clearly helps in choosing the right AMD driver
for your System specifications. Also read the release notes for the latest driver for your graphic
card(Especially check if your system satisfies all the system requirements). Then after
downloading your driver installer(the .zip file) get to this site and follow the instructions to install
your driver. Your driver must be installed and it should work successfully.

I also need to add that I do not recommend downloading the Drivers from the Nvidia site
since they:

* Might create additional problems with Ubuntu

* Are not updated automatically
* Are not tested thoroughly in Ubuntu

Always use the nvidia-current package or the nvidia-current-updates one. These are tested
and approved already for the Ubuntu version you are using and will give less errors and
incompatibility bugs.

Issues with Intel graphics

For Intel it is recommended to do the following after doing all the steps mentioned above but
before installing anything (When you are in the Terminal). You can choose Xorg-Edgers which
is a PPA that brings many improvements, latest video drivers and more:

Warning: This PPA is very unstable for some things. So do it with that in mind.
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa -y

After that sudo apt-get update and you should receive several updates. X-Swat currently does
not have Intel drivers in the latest versions of Ubuntu.

Update log

UPDATE 1: Added this extensive answer to solve many of the problems that might end with
the error mentioned here: How do I install the Nvidia drivers?

UPDATE 2: AMD is no longer releasing (stable) graphics drivers on a monthly basis and not all
graphics chips are supported by their Linux drivers upon product release. At the time of this
update the latest stable driver is almost 5 months older than the latest beta driver. You should
look at the release notes to check if there is a driver that supports your graphics chip and the
software versions you are using (X.org xserver or Mir).

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Like always please test and give feedback so I can enhance my answer since others will be
also reading it. The better it is, the more people it will help.

edited Apr 13 at 12:23 answered Nov 16 '12 at 15:56

Community Luis Alvarado
1 125k 123 445 624

1 After trying all the other solutions, that's the one that worked for me. Thanks! Matthieu Mar 21 '13 at 22:34

1 Upgrading from 12.04 to 13.10 with Radeon 3000: I had to remove and purge the fglrx, then remove "nomodeset"
from my /etc/default/grub, then update-grub. To remove fglrx {sudo apt-get remove --purge xorg-driver-fglrx fglrx*}
{sudo apt-get install --reinstall libgl1-mesa-glx libgl1-mesa-dri xserver-xorg-core} {sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-
xorg}. Also had to add "radeon.audio=1" to /etc/default/grub flamingpenguin Mar 25 '14 at 13:57

1 ctrl+alt+f1 doesn't give me a terminal schwiz Aug 27 '14 at 0:54

1 @LuisAlvarado nvidia-current can install the wrong driver. It happened to me. You can install bumblebee for
nvidia graphic cards. It will installed the correct driver automatically. After ctrl + alt + f1 , you can use the
following commands: sudo add-apt-repository ppa:bumblebee/stable sudo apt-get update sudo
apt-get install bumblebee bumblebee-nvidia primus linux-headers-generic NOTE: Follow this for
other than 14.04 LTS. user281989 Jul 15 '15 at 17:03

1 I had kept an additional kernel having one step lower version. When the screen i.stack.imgur.com/5kllk.png showed
up, I selected the lower kernel and could login in normally. Though I still did see some system errors. I corrected
them later. maan81 Aug 24 '15 at 9:14

I solved this problem by reinstalling ubuntu-desktop.

When the message that "your system is running in low-graphics mode" appears, press Ctrl +
Alt + F1 , then login with your credentials.

And then, run the following commands:

sudo apt-get install --reinstall ubuntu-desktop

sudo reboot

edited Jul 7 '12 at 2:52 answered Apr 26 '12 at 18:20

Jonah user41938
324 2 22 579 3 2

2 when i give this command!i got memory is full no more space available! Thiyagu ATR Apr 4 '13 at 14:33

4 This may help when the problem is to do with the desktop, but usually for me this type of problem comes from a
combination of the graphics drivers and a kernel upgrade. In this case the other answers here are more appropriate,
with particular reference to @Luis. Bobble Jun 12 '13 at 6:06

@Thiyagu your problem is that you don't have more space in the hard drive. Braiam Apr 22 '14 at 5:24

I don't quite get how, but this is what solved my problem. thank you for sharing it! Jani Kovacs Jul 17 '14 at 11:46

This solved it for me. Thanks a lot!! n3o Nov 19 '14 at 1:55

The greeter is invalid

This is a bug in LightDM and a bug report has already been filed.

The reason why you end up with this failsafe X is because the pantheon-greeter you installed
along with the elementary desktop is now not available and LightDM is not able to identify an
alternative greeter.

As a workaround, you can edit the LightDM conf file and correct the error.

Run the following command in a terminal:

sudo nano /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf

and change the line

greeter-session=pantheon-greeter

to

greeter-session=unity-greeter

and save it.

After changing the file, reboot and you will now be greeted with Unity greeter.

edited Jul 26 '12 at 7:47 community wiki

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3 revs
jokerdino

That workaround doesn't works for me. I'm speaking around three hundreds clients that doesn't works. But the bug is
not continous, it's appears randomly. ssoto Sep 5 '13 at 9:53

3 This doesn't help in my case. I already have the unity-greeter in /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf Sauli Oct 23 '13 at 11:23

1 @Sauli but are you sure that the unity-greeter package is installed on your machine? In my case, after an upgrade to
13.10, lightdm.conf indeed mentioned unity-greeter , although I only had lightdm-gtk-greeter installed.
You might want to check which greeter is installed on your machine (e.g. through synaptic ). Virgile Oct 24 '13 at
11:53

@Virgile, yes, the unity-greeter version is 13.10.3-0ubuntu1. I don't have lightdm-gtk-greeter installed. At the end,
after trying many proposals at this page, I solved the problem by reinstalling 13.10 from a USB drive. I made the
reinstallation on top of the existing, non-working 13.10. Sauli Oct 24 '13 at 12:31

It's prefect, It's right answer. Mahdi Parsa Aug 1 '14 at 7:03

You have too many files on your computer, and have exhausted disk space

Try moving personal files off the computer onto a USB drive.

To check whether this is the issue:

1. Press Ctrl + Alt + F1

2. Type df -h

3. If you see that there is no space available on the root ( / ) then you need to free
some space.

To free space you can:

1. sudo apt-get autoclean

2. Look for large directories with sudo du -sc /*/* |sort -g and delete unwanted
content,
3. Clean your home directory using a combination of
cd ~
du -sc * |sort -g
rm myLargeFile

When this is done, restart: shutdown -r now

edited Jan 15 '13 at 10:10 answered May 18 '12 at 2:42

Aditya Azul Mascara
7,976 11 47 84 493 1 6 7

It is a valid reason. If you exhaust disk space. Ubuntu will run in low graphics mode. I tested this in virtual machine.
Web-E Nov 23 '12 at 10:46

2 Thanks! This did the job for me. Initially I did not think of checking the remaining space on the SSD. Andre May 5
'13 at 0:31

Happens also in 13.04. This is definitely a usability bug since there is no message anywhere that can give a clue
about the disk space issue. Avio Jul 18 '13 at 6:32

My issue now is that in recovery mode it is mounting the disk in read only mode so I'm unable to delete any files to
resolve the issue. Any idea how to resolve this?. Abby Sep 14 '13 at 4:22

I guess this may have been related to my case. I was running out of space on /root. But freeing space with clean or
autoclean didn't solve the wholw problem nor did repartitioning and allocating more space. Sauli Oct 23 '13 at 11:28

When this happens there is often an error message indicating why it failed to start X.

Look in your /var/log/Xorg.0.log.old or /var/log/Xorg.0.log . The error (if there is one) will be
at the tail end of the file. Another good place to look is the log files in /var/log/gdm/* (or
/var/log/lightdm/* in oneiric and later).

Did you happen to manually install fglrx prior to noticing the problem? If it was not uninstalled
properly it can cause weird random issues. Directions for purging fglrx are available at here.

Is your video card an AGP model? If so, a common issue with ati agp cards is having an
incorrect AGPMode. Sometimes you can adjust this setting in your BIOS (which perhaps
windows screwed with?) There is also a setting in /etc/X11/xorg.conf for adjusting it in X.

edited Aug 29 at 10:43 answered Nov 1 '10 at 22:35

Zanna Bryce
35.5k 12 83 166 3,856 15 38

It is not related to Nvidia drivers. Because by default Ubuntu uses non-Nvidia drivers even
though you might have Nvidia GPUs. I have an Nvidia GPU too.

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My Ubuntu used to boot fine until something happened which caused the same issue. After
reading posts, reading logs and little bit trial and error, turns out the problem is related to
lightdm GUI server.

I don't know solution to the problem but there is a quick work around in 3 steps. This will save
you from reinstalling Ubuntu.

1. When the error shows up, hit Ctrl + Alt + F1 . This will open the command line interface.
Login as root.
2. Remove a particular X11 config file. This file is not really required.

rm /etc/X11/xorg.conf.failsafe

Somehow, the existence of the above X11 configuration file causes the OS to throw that
error.
3. Restart lightdm GUI server.
service lightdm restart

This will restart the lightdm GUI server and voila your desktop is back!

edited Sep 16 '13 at 8:26 community wiki

2 revs, 2 users 82%
sccott

1 I did exactly this and it worked for me, not sure if this is worth mentioning(using a nvidia gtx860m) jayeshkv Jul 14
'15 at 1:58

This was the answer that ultimately solved it for me (along with doing sudo apt-get upgrade etc.). Using NVIDIA
GeForce 7025. Xufox Sep 28 '15 at 17:50

Let's assume, arrogantly, that it is a problem with your X display manager.

Enter the terminal (you can use a virtual console if you cannot use a graphical terminal
window), the one you said that you have access to, and enter the following:

sudo apt-get install gdm

. . . and choose gdm.

Then type:

sudo service gdm restart

(Or ... start instead of restart .)

According to https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1070150 this is a way to

workaround a bug with lightdm.

Before typing that, you may need to first stop the other display manager that is running. This is
usually LightDM:

sudo service lightdm stop

If you have trouble getting GDM to start, and this is an installed system rather than a live
environment, then you can just reboot and it will start automatically because you configured it
as the default display manager. (You should be able to shut down and restart normally.
Otherwise, one way to reboot if the GUI is not working properly is to press Ctrl + Alt + Delete
while on a virtual console.)

edited Sep 5 '13 at 21:57 answered Aug 8 '12 at 2:23

Eliah Kagan David M. Sousa
67k 18 188 300 731 5 13

This did work for me, but could you please explain why it would work? Radagasp Feb 2 '15 at 13:08

I'm sorry, I'm not an expert. I just posted a solution I found for myself. David M. Sousa Feb 2 '15 at 20:19

This didn't work for me and got me further off, now I don't even get the low graphics error but just a black screen.
Ansjovis86 Apr 7 at 15:07

Don't do this solution if you already have lightdm. My system got screwed up as I was running two such services.
Luckily I got out of the mess with switching back to lightdm by running this command: sudo dpkg-reconfigure
gdm3 Ansjovis86 Apr 7 at 21:49

Only for ATI graphics cards

When the message that "your system is running in low-graphics mode" appears:
Press Ctrl + Alt + F1 to see the terminal one. Then login with your credentials, and then run
the following commands:

sudo apt-get install fglrx

sudo reboot

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The same can be done from the recovery mode (after enabling networking), if your Ubuntu
completly refuses to enter anything but recovery mode.

edited Sep 12 '12 at 13:46 answered Apr 27 '12 at 10:56

Community ltedone
1 121 2

Follow these commands:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get -d install --reinstall gdm
sudo apt-get remove --purge gdm

(I ran this command above, but was told by the system to use # sudo apt-get autoremove
instead, after the #sudo apt-get remove --purge gdm command.)

sudo apt-get install gdm

select GDM when prompted

sudo reboot

That fixed it for me :)

It took very long to start after the reboot, 10+ mins. But I got in eventually.

edited Nov 19 '12 at 16:21 answered Apr 30 '12 at 9:41

Community Shaeve
1 111 2

If you have a problem with the restricted (closed source) driver , then try to remove it.

Open a terminal and give this command

gksudo software-properties-gtk

Goto Additional drivers and remove the dirver. You have to mark the Using X.Org X server -
- Nouveau.

Then Reboot.

If you have not access at all to the Desktop Environment then use the Recovery Mode.

To remove the Nvidia current driver in Ubuntu 12.10

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Select the Network and your root partition will mounted as Read-Write.

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9/6/2017 xorg - How to fix "The system is running in low-graphics mode" error? - Ask Ubuntu
Select the Root

And then give these commands with order

apt-get remove --purge nvidia-current

rm /etc/X11/xorg.conf
apt-get install ubuntu-desktop
reboot

The last command will reboot your system and hopefully you will login normally in next reboot
with the Open Source nouveau driver.

If you have problem with the open source driver (nouveau) , in the same manner
(from recovery mode) try to install the restricted (Nvidia) driver with these commands

When you reach the Root selection and after select root

To install nvidia-current driver.

apt-get install linux-source

apt-get install linux-headers-$(uname -r)
apt-get install nvidia-current
nvidia-xconfig
reboot

According to this answer : Ubuntu 12.10 Desktop does not show when I
installed nvidia drivers! may need to install or reinstall the linux-headers to
get the restricted Nvidia drivers work properly.

edited Apr 13 at 12:24 answered Oct 20 '12 at 6:36

Community NickTh
1 11.8k 4 37 61

This is not a problem with the restricted or closed driver. It came just after i had a fresh install of 12.10 on my laptop.
Vivek Anand Oct 20 '12 at 6:41

Then try to do the opposite . Follow the guide from recovery mode and install the restricted driver , when you reach
the root environment give these commands apt-get install nvidia-current and nvidia-xconfig and
reboot I edited my answer. NickTh Oct 20 '12 at 6:46

Didn't work on my laptop :( Vivek Anand Oct 24 '12 at 14:35

You are a legend, man. This solved my problems. It astounds me that after TWELVE years they still haven't included a
solid default multi-monitor installation for one of the TWO most common graphics card types in the world. Swader
Oct 25 '12 at 21:21

I have recently received a similar issue with myPangolin Performance laptop. The folks at
System 76 told me to do the following:

Click Okay and then select the option to get a terminal. (alternatively you can press ctr+alt+f1
to bring up another tty)

sudo chown lightdm:lightdm -R /var/lib/lightdm

sudo chown avahi-autoipd:avahi-autoipd -R /var/lib/avahi-autoipd
sudo chown colord:colord -R /var/lib/colord

reboot

These commands did the trick for me.

answered May 16 '12 at 12:58

Mc1brew
111 3

Anyone, reading this, have messed up with /var permission, should try this. Ajeeb.K.P Mar 21 '16 at 10:01

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This problem destroyed my morning. It turns out that if your root filesystem runs out of space
then Ubuntu will boot into low graphics mode and it's hard to figure out why since the xorg log
shows nothing wrong. To find out from the command line if you're low on space type

df -h

Sample output from my machine:

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on

/dev/sda6 18G 10G 6.6G 61% /
udev 3.9G 4.0K 3.9G 1% /dev
tmpfs 3.9G 108K 3.9G 1% /tmp
tmpfs 1.6G 1.2M 1.6G 1% /run
none 5.0M 0 5.0M 0% /run/lock
none 3.9G 1.3M 3.9G 1% /run/shm
none 100M 16K 100M 1% /run/user
/dev/sda4 317G 33G 285G 11% /media/data
/dev/sda1 197M 16M 182M 8% /boot/efi

If your mount has a high Use% (90%+) then this could be your problem. In my case,
/
had grown to fill most of my partition and caused me to fall into low-
~/.xsession.errors
graphics mode. Found my answer for that in this Ubuntuforums thread:

rm ~/.xsession-errors
mkdir ~/.xsession-errors

answered Nov 22 '12 at 3:17 community wiki

Tron

Try delete your /etc/X11/xorg.conf and restart.

Before restart, run

sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-radeon

answered Nov 1 '10 at 4:26

Extender
1,718 17 23

I had a similar problem.

When I was booting my PC, i was getting the following message: Ubuntu is running in low-
graphics mode

When I used startx on the command prompt however, everything was fine and i could start
the xserver.

Now I found out that for some strange reason GDM has been uninstalled (it took me hours to
realize that), i did fix the problem by reinstalling gdm with:

apt-get install gdm

now everything's running. Hope this helps you.

edited Oct 8 '11 at 20:27 answered Apr 25 '11 at 20:10

fossfreedom I.C.
137k 32 312 349 51 1

Well, I had the same problem and solved it.

1. Start ubuntu with recovery mode from grub then choose filesystem check followed by
enable networking.
2. Choose root option to get to terminal. Now uninstall the old drivers

sh /usr/share/ati/fglrx-uninstall

3. Then reinstall the drivers following the methods for precise from this website
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BinaryDriverHowto/ATI.
4. After that everything works out just fine, I suggest you do

apt-get update && apt-get upgrade && apt-get autoremove

-everytime you complete a step. Good luck.

edited May 17 '12 at 14:09 answered May 2 '12 at 13:28

Mateo user59569
6,711 8 44 67 51 2

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I had the same problem with an Acer Aspire 3810tg. I solved it by doing the following:

Do a normal boot
Press Ctrl-Alt-F1 on the "Your system is running in low-graphics mode" screen
Download the correct driver from
http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/Pages/index.aspx, in my case (ATI Mobility
Radeon HD 4330): wget http://www2.ati.com/drivers/linux/amd-driver-installer-12-4-
x86.x86_64.run which should also cover your case (Mobility Radeon HD 4xxx Series)

chmod 755 amd-driver-installer-12-4-x86.x86_64.run to make the file executable

sudo ./amd-driver-installer-12-4-x86.x86_64.run and follow the standard steps
You might need to run: sudo aticonfig --initial , but that was not necessary for me.

In my case the driver installation finished with an error, but it still worked. I hope this helps.

edited May 21 '12 at 19:11 answered May 17 '12 at 19:12

torbenl
141 3

You said that you were stuck in low graphics mode and now you say that you can only get a
command prompt. What happens when you type: startx

If you are stuck in a command prompt all is not lost. You can still reconfigure xserver with: sudo
dpkg --reconfigure --phigh xserver-xorg

edited Sep 12 '11 at 16:40 answered Nov 2 '10 at 0:22

N.N. LinuxCanuck
6,974 11 47 82 456 2 3

2 dpkg-reconfigure xorg no longer does anything useful, since X is generally much better at detecting your hardware
than our crufty old maintainer scripts were. RAOF Nov 2 '10 at 5:50

not allays true @RAOF, I have some old hardware that can not be properly detected unless I reinstall xorg
completely. Mateo Nov 30 '12 at 22:15

Phenomenon: I first saw Booting without full network configuration message that never
ended. After Action-1 below, I faced The system is running in low-graphics mode issue.

Action-1: Force to shutdown the machine (by keeping power button pressed as normal).
Choose recovery boot.

Effective solution: Remove & install xserver-xorg , inspired by this thread.

Edit) after creating xorg.conf and had it read in xserver, I faced the same issue again. This
time, in addition to re-install xserver-xorg , I had to create /etc/X11/xorg.conf file (I did so by
copying the backup file I already made).

edited Apr 13 at 12:23 community wiki

4 revs
IsaacS

@guntbert agreed. I updated my answer. IsaacS Apr 2 '13 at 21:08

I just had to disable Internal Graphics Board on BIOS

display.

Using ga-z87n/ga-h87n (GIGABYTE) motherboard.

answered Oct 22 '13 at 0:15 community wiki

IsaacS

Or, the most likely of the reasons with old PC's is:

Your graphic card just do not support unity.

Try Lubuntu/Xubuntu instead.

Unity requires: Any graphics card with OpenGL 1.4 support (All GPUs released today by either
NVidia, AMD or Intel; GPUs released by NVidia and AMD over the last 5 years; GPUs released
by Intel after the GMA 950). If you card don't meet this requirements, then is just that you can't
use Unity (yet).

answered Dec 24 '13 at 1:47 community wiki

Braiam

https://askubuntu.com/questions/141606/how-to-fix-the-system-is-running-in-low-graphics-mode-error 11/14
9/6/2017 xorg - How to fix "The system is running in low-graphics mode" error? - Ask Ubuntu

Install gdm from the default Ubuntu repositories. GDM provides the equivalent of a "login:"
prompt for X displays: it asks for a login and starts X sessions.

During the installation of gdm you will be asked to select either gdm or lightdm as the default
login display manager. Select gdm.

edited Nov 25 '16 at 7:18 answered Oct 6 '12 at 11:07

karel
32.9k 10 82 94

Which ubuntu version are you running? Did you installed graphics drivers before the problem
or is it a post clean-os-install issue? Giving some more info would be helpful for us to help you.

If you messed with the graphic drivers before the problem came up, get to the login screen,
press Ctrl + Alt + F1 , login, then:

sudo apt-get purge nvidia-*

sudo apt-get autoremove

sudo apt-get linux-source linux-headers-generic

sudo apt-get install nvidia-current

sudo nvidia-xconfig

sudo shutdown -r now

Of course, if you have an ATI videocard you have to change the nvidia-* and nvidia-current
for your ATI drivers package.

edited Jun 26 at 17:00 answered Feb 13 '13 at 0:24

Paranoid Panda Toperharrier
17.9k 54 155 301 84 3

What are you expecting to do with sudo apt-get linux-source linux-headers-generic , apt-get will return
error. Braiam Jul 26 '13 at 1:31

similar to this answer, and after trying several other answers: dpkg -l | grep nvidia then remove purge every
single package from this list, e.g. sudo apt-get remove --purge nvidia finally, sudo apt-get install
nvidia-current sudo shutdown -r now Csar Apr 10 at 2:17

I had the same problem but this method works for me.

When you get The system is running low-graphics mode error,press ctrl+alt+F1 ,it will take you
to the console.
Then it will asks for username and password to login,give that.Once you logged in to the
console run the below command,

sudo rm /etc/X11/xorg.conf
sudo service lightdm restart

It will get you back to the GUI login.Why this problem occurs means,after you installed
graphics drivers ,it creates xorg.conf file in /etc/X11 folder.Which prevents the system from
GUI login .

answered Nov 8 '13 at 23:59 community wiki

Avinash Raj

Try to boot from grub using a different parameter or even booting an older kernel
from the list.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BootOptions

See the section on kernel options. Something like: xforcevesa

Good luck! :)

answered Nov 8 '10 at 18:30

LinuxCanuck
456 2 3

Follow these commands:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get -d install --reinstall gdm

https://askubuntu.com/questions/141606/how-to-fix-the-system-is-running-in-low-graphics-mode-error 12/14
9/6/2017 xorg - How to fix "The system is running in low-graphics mode" error? - Ask Ubuntu
sudo apt-get remove --purge gdm
sudo apt-get install gdm
sudo apt-get remove --purge xserver-xgl compiz compiz-plugins compiz-core compiz-manager
csm cgwd cgwd-themes
sudo apt-get install --reinstall compiz compiz-core compiz-fusion-plugins-extra compiz-
fusion-plugins-main compiz-gnome compiz-plugins libcompizconfig0
sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg

choose the driver 'ati' and when you get to monitor resolution choose the resolution you want
to run and any resolution ABOVE that resolution should be removed. Once that is done issue
the following:*

sudo reboot

You will most likely get errors on specific packages. Repeat the command removing the
problem package until it works.

There will be a time where you will be without the desktop, so have another internet connected
device nearby to reference this from or to Google with in case of emergency.

This worked for me, hope this helps.

*If you are never prompted, just skip this.

answered Feb 1 '11 at 3:35

John
1,742 6 21 35

I had a special case of this problem, where I somehow caused the removal of some packages.
I only noticed the actual problem after some time spent looking at the problem.

So:

1. Log into the text mode console

2. Enter the command: sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop

This will ensure all the needed packages are installed. Without some of those, symptoms like
those described here may occur.

edited Sep 2 '11 at 16:01 answered Aug 15 '11 at 20:15

Kris Harper Timo Jyrinki
8,416 9 43 70 455 2 6

I had the issue when I upgraded from 11.10 on my Acer Aspire One AO-722. I also had the
propriety ATi/AMD driver installed from 11.10, which carried over to the 12.04 installation. I
followed this guide to remove the proprietary drivers and use the Open Source drivers.
http://wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/Ubuntu_Oneiric_Installation_Guide#Removing_Catalyst.2Ffglr
x Everything seems to be working now.

answered May 6 '12 at 20:35

Jeremy
1

1 Welcome to Ask Ubuntu! Whilst this may theoretically answer the question, it would be preferable to include the
essential parts of the answer here, and provide the link for reference. fossfreedom May 7 '12 at 8:58

You need to install the kernel headers manually then reinstall nvidia for some reason then the
nvidia drivers will work

answered Oct 20 '12 at 8:53

Martin
1

The modules for the driver have to be build for the individual kernel to use and this is why the kernel headers have to
be installed. Usually they are pulled in via dependencies when installing the drivers. LiveWireBT Oct 23 '12 at 4:10

It didn't work for me. I installed the headers and then the drivers as mentioned :( Vivek Anand Oct 24 '12 at 14:36

Your Memory may be bad.

If you experience Low graphics mode intermittently like I was.

1. Run a memory check to check for memory errors.

2. Buy New memory(Make sure it is the right type for your
computer)
3. Run the memory test again, to make sure all is good.

https://askubuntu.com/questions/141606/how-to-fix-the-system-is-running-in-low-graphics-mode-error 13/14
9/6/2017 xorg - How to fix "The system is running in low-graphics mode" error? - Ask Ubuntu
The Low Graphics Mode error should now be gone.

edited Nov 30 '12 at 22:13 answered Oct 8 '11 at 17:43

Mateo Bruce
6,711 8 44 67 1

1. Press CTRL + ALT + F1 to open a terminal

2. log in
3. look at the end of your /var/log/Xorg.0.log

4. if the message error is Cannot run in framebuffer mode. Please specify busIDs. then
run the following commands:
sudo apt-get install --reinstall lightdm
sudo reboot

answered Mar 28 '13 at 11:14 community wiki

Marco Lackovic

1 2 next

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