Comment 21 for bug 273801

Upon my last comment, I was actually able to get the driver working again by completely removing (including files from the apt cache) and using Hardware Drivers in the Administration menu to reinstall it. The instructions are as follows:

1. Open Synaptic in the System -> Administration menu.
2. Once in Synaptic, click the Search button (or press ctrl + f) and search for nvidia.
3. Next, right-click each of the following and select Completely Remove:
       nvidia-173-kernel-source
       nvidia-glx-173
       nvidia-settings
4. Click Apply to remove the packages.
5. Next open a Terminal from Applications -> Accessories and type:
       sudo apt-get clean
6. Press <Enter> and enter your password.
7. Finally, open Hardware Drivers in the System -> Administration menu
8. Select the driver you want to use and press the Activate button.
9. Once it's finished installing, reboot the machine and the driver should take effect.

For my own sake, I then used nvidia-xconfig to write a new xorg.conf file and edited out the lines that caused the driver to choke. This was unneeded, but made me feel better as the newer one was more thorough then the one created automatically.

Hopefully, this will work for you as well Lynn.