I followed the procedure here:
and am still getting this:
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.
Looks like nouveau is still loading? Which is a problem.
lsmod | grep -i nouv
nouveau              2478080  0
mxm_wmi                16384  1 nouveau
wmi                    32768  2 mxm_wmi,nouveau
i2c_algo_bit           16384  1 nouveau
drm_display_helper    155648  1 nouveau
video                  53248  1 nouveau
drm_ttm_helper         16384  2 vmwgfx,nouveau
ttm                    81920  3 vmwgfx,drm_ttm_helper,nouveau
drm_kms_helper        184320  5 vmwgfx,drm_display_helper,nouveau
drm                   602112  8 vmwgfx,drm_kms_helper,drm_display_helper,drm_ttm_helper,ttm,nouveau