NVIDIA-SMI has failed because it couldn’t communicate with the NVIDIA driver after updating Ubuntu 20.04

[markus.kaukonen]

@walter9

sudo dkms remove nvidia/460.39 --all
sudo dkms install --force nvidia/460.39 -k $(uname -r)
sudo update-initramfs -u
sync
reboot

Fixed my missing GPU problem as well (with replacing driver as 470.74 instead of 460.39 above) . I had updated a new kernel (because of sound problems of my laptop) but that had messed up my nvidia driver. Returned to default kernel and it is now working fine. My system is ubuntu 20.10, driver 470.74, kernel 5.11.0-38-generic , lenovo yoga laptop with GEFORCE GPX GPU.