How to fix Ubuntu NVIDIA driver is not loaded

I was using Ubuntu 20.04 on my PC with NVIDIA GTX 1060 card. Even after installing the driver from Additional Drivers, I got the below error when running nvidia-smi to check if the driver is working.

$ nvidia-smi
NVIDIA-SMI has failed because it couldn't communicate with the NVIDIA driver. Make sure that the latest NVIDIA driver is installed and running.
nvidia-settings 
ERROR: NVIDIA driver is not loaded
ERROR: Unable to load info from any available system

After a lot of searching, I ended up with this solution:

To resolve the above issue, you can do these simple steps:
Step 1: Make sure you have nvidia-prime installed:

sudo apt install nvidia-prime

Step 2: Run these commands in Terminal:

sudo prime-select nvidia
sudo rm /lib/modprobe.d/blacklist-nvidia.conf
sudo update-initramfs -u

Step 3: Reboot

sudo reboot

Step 4: Check again

nvidia-smi

And ta-da! It’s working.

Have questions? Find me at http://simonpham.github.io