I can reproduce something very similar. I installed Ubuntu 8.10 - Upgraded and did a Dist-Upgrade.
Enabled the Restricted Hardware Driver for Nvidia 177x
Rebooted, and it drops me to the Terminal.
I have also re-installed completely and attempted to manually install the Nvidia Drivers x_86_64 and have the same problem.
I used Ubuntu 8.10 64bit / with Nvidia 2x Geforce 8800GT
I can reproduce something very similar. I installed Ubuntu 8.10 - Upgraded and did a Dist-Upgrade.
Enabled the Restricted Hardware Driver for Nvidia 177x
Rebooted, and it drops me to the Terminal.
I have also re-installed completely and attempted to manually install the Nvidia Drivers x_86_64 and have the same problem.
I used Ubuntu 8.10 64bit / with Nvidia 2x Geforce 8800GT