Nvidia gtx 980 flashing tty black screen topic

I've been using ubuntu on my laptop for a while and it works great, so I decided to install it on my desktop PC as well.

I installed 14.04 64 bit but immediately ran into the problem of getting black screen if I pressed CTRL+ALT+1.. - This was before I installed any nvidia drivers.
Modifying the /etc/default/grub solved it

But after installing nvidia 346.35 drivers the problem came back - worse, not only does the screen go black if I press CTL alt 1, it also starts flashing wildly (I recorded a video of it here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pS73Lf4s8Pk).

You can see the values Ive experimented in the /etc/default/grub to try to solve this, but they dont seem to have any effect at all.
The grub menus work fine and the console is also fine UNTIL x and the nvidia drivers loads, when all *** breaks lose and the screen starts flashing.

Everything (except tty1-..) works fine as soon as I enter the x desktop (sry if I use the wrong terminology. I've just recently migrated my non-work environment from windows :))

Hardware is a gtx980, and monitor an asus rog swift monitor (2560x1440 @ 144 Hz).
Another problem I have is that I cannot seem to permanently set my refresh rate to 144 Hz (ubuntu ignores xorg.conf on boot?) - but perhaps that's better left for another thread...
xrandr --output DP-4 --mode 2560x1440 --rate 144 does the trick for the refresh rate, but, not sure how to make that permanent :P - Heck Id be happy if I could just put it in some auto script (tried .profile and .xinitrc without any luck )

[lubuntu] Black screen on start up - help? topic

Hi, tried to install Wine. Used the Lubuntu Software center, added to cart and then left it to install. Came back 30-minutes later and a black screen.

I am using it within VMWare Player and I can shut it down via Player and I see the Lubuntu sign-off screen.

I can restart it and see the Sign-on screen, but then a few seconds later it goes black with no mouse cursor.

Any way to roll back to before the Wine attempt?
OR
Any way to get beneath the black screen and kill off whatever is causing it?

My last backup was 2/3/15 so hoping I can recover what I had just before Wine, but can go to 2/3 if I must.

Thought I'd ask here first. :)

"Black Screen of Death" -- Restart Desktop? topic

Greetings!

I'm tired of not knowing the "secret handshake" to restart XFCE (or any other desktop) after it crashes. After mucking about with 'buntu for several years now, I realize this simply will happen from time-to-time due to a whole spectrum of causes.

Symptoms: Entire UI disappears; and is replaced with the current system "Black Screen" terminal output with no evidently accessible commandline. Mouse may still be working; but does nothing useful apart from move the pointer aimlessly about...

Current solution: Hard reboot via power button.

Sick of this!

SO, how does one go about simply restarting the desktop without pulling the plug on a system like this?

Thanks!