Comment 15 for bug 824140

I have been able to get this going by installing nvidia-current.
For some reason it broke again however this time I could run lightdm from command line after boot.
I got sick of doing this every boot, so I started fresh again. The following output is from a fresh install prior to installing nvidia-current drivers.

Fresh 11.10 (32bit) install on Dell Precision M6500 (64bit).
Boot stops after "Checking battery state".
Ctrl+Alt+F1 then startx

X.Org X Server 1.10.4
Release Date: 2011-08-19
X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0
Build Operating System: Linux 2.6.24-29-server i686 Ubuntu
Current Operating System: Linux hostname 3.0.0-12-generic-pae #20-Ubuntu SMP Fri OCT 7 16:37:17 UTC 2011 i686
Kernel command line: BOOT_MAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-3.0.0-12-generic-pae root=UUID-ba00a000-7b9f-40a8-a72b-18674f486639 ro quiet splash vt.handoff=7
Build Date: 29 September 2011 12:48:48AM
xorg-server 2:1.10.4-1ubuntu4
Current version of pixman: 0.22.2 ...

...
(EE) Failed to load module "nv" (module does not exist, 0)
FATAL: Module nvidia_173 not found.
(EE) NVIDIA(0): Failed to load the NVIDIA kernel module!
(EE) NVIDIA(0): *** Aborting ***
(EE) Screens(s) found, but none have a usable configuration.

Fatal server error:
no screens found

Let me know if I can provide any more info. Still looking for a solid fix.