Ok doke, I’ll give this a try. Gonna go make myself a nice brew, falling asleep here. XD
If that still won’t stop the X server … try this -
Boot to Recovery mode … select Drop to a root shell … I’m guessing at this point X won’t be running, so run these commands:
cd /home/bally/Downloads
./nvidia.run
nvidia-xconfig
exit
Then select Continue with normal boot (or similar)
again, you’ll have to adjust the .run filename and the path if necessary.
Right, I never did anything last night… I had a cuppa then went to bed. Was far too tired. Gonna give this a wirl after I get a cuppa to wake myself up, and have read the ever growing newspaper: Facebook. (:
Ok so, I dropped to a root shell, managed to do the first 3 commands, and then as I was going to do
nvidia-xconfig
I got the response:
nvidia-xconfig: command not dound
so I just did:
sudo service gdm start
Logged into Ubuntu, (normal) and I’m currently on the fallback enviroment Gnome 2. So I’m guessing the drivers didn’t install.
is there a file at /usr/bin/nvidia-xconfig
ls -l /usr/bin/nvidia-xconfig
?
Nope there’s no file called nvidia-xconfig.
Which driver is it currently using ?
sudo lshw -C display
Something else crossed my mind… did you say in another thread that your system now takes much longer to boot than it used to ?
If so, is this the installation you changed the kernel in … to the one with those steering wheel drivers ?
*-display
description: VGA compatible controller
product: G84 [GeForce 9500M GS]
vendor: nVidia Corporation
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0
version: a1
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm msi pciexpress vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
configuration: driver=nouveau latency=0
resources: irq:16 memory:c6000000-c6ffffff memory:d0000000-dfffffff memory:c4000000-c5ffffff ioport:2000(size=128)
Yeah it’s running the 2.6.38 kernel with the new headers and kernel image for my wheel. I noticed how long it takes to boot up when compared with Maverick, or Ludic. When I booted up on those versions of Ubuntu, you could boot up and in the blink of an eye, the desktop and everything would be loaded. But now, Natty seems to boot-up… you wait a minute or two then shows the desktop.
The best way I can explain it is… I log in normally, I get the default login background with a mouse… login sound plays… background doesn’t change, so you wait a minute or so and then everything loads up.
A quick search tells me that the xorg-edgers PPA contains the nvidia 285.05.09 drivers, so it might be a good idea to install ppa-purge (just in case) then add the PPA, run an update, then just let additional drivers install the 285 drivers.
sudo apt-get install ppa-purge
then
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa
then
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
Then go to Additional Drivers … and activate the NVIDIA 285 driver.
But If your system is taking that much longer to boot, I’m guessing there are other problems too.
To UNDO…
To remove the PPA and revert back to the original packages:
sudo ppa-purge ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa
then
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
I don’t see any nvidia 285 drivers. All I see are the version 173 drivers and the version current drivers. There’s also “Experimental 3D support for NVIDIA cards” by the Ubuntu devs…
Are they available in synaptic ?
Nope nothing.
Right something weird is happening now, when I tried to reinstall the original drivers until we found a solution, the additional drivers manager didn’t install the nvidia-settings conf for Xserver settings to open, and it isn’t telling me to restart to update. There’s no broken packages in Synaptic either. 
so the only way I can actually get a semi functional desktop is by dropping to a root console and then doing:
sudo service gdm start
Which then fires up Unity without the nvidia drivers.
Try this…
drop to a shell, then run
sudo service gdm stop
cd ~/Downloads
sudo sh NVIDIA* --uninstall
sudo service gdm start
then reboot into low graphics mode … then try installing from Additional drivers again.
You might also want to try removing the xorg-edgers PPA (instructions above).
When removing the xorg-edgers PPA I got this after I ran update & upgrade:
Sorry, the package "nvidia-current-270,41,06-0ubuntu1" failed to install or upgrade"
EDIT: Just so you can see what’s going on in Terminal, it keeps triggering errors between debian package manager or nvidia… :S
Setting up linux-libc-dev (2.6.38-11.50) ...
Setting up xserver-common (2:1.10.1-1ubuntu1.2) ...
Setting up xserver-xorg-core (2:1.10.1-1ubuntu1.2) ...
Setting up nvidia-current (270.41.06-0ubuntu1) ...
update-alternatives: error: alternative link /usr/share/man/man1/nvidia-xconfig.1.gz is already managed by x86_64-linux-gnu_gl_conf.
dpkg: error processing nvidia-current (--configure):
subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 2
Setting up xserver-xorg-input-synaptics (1.3.99+git20110116.0e27ce3a-0ubuntu12.1) ...
Setting up xserver-xorg-video-radeon (1:6.14.0-0ubuntu4.1) ...
Setting up xserver-xorg-video-ati (1:6.14.0-0ubuntu4.1) ...
Setting up xserver-xorg-video-intel (2:2.14.0-4ubuntu7.1) ...
Processing triggers for libc-bin ...
ldconfig deferred processing now taking place
Errors were encountered while processing:
nvidia-current
N: Ignoring file 'google.list' in directory '/etc/apt/sources.list.d/' as it has an invalid filename extension
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
OK, try this…
I’m asuming NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-285.05.09.run is in your Downloads directory…
Boot to Recovery Mode … select drop to a Root Shell
Run:
apt-get install ppa-purge
add-apt-repository ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa
apt-get update
apt-get remove --purge nvidia*
cd /home/bally/Downloads
./NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-285.05.09.run --uninstall
apt-get install nvidia-current
Now to reboot, run:
shutdown -r now
No idea if the drivers installed, they must’ve seeing as I’m able to boot normally although, when I go into Xserver settings, it says they’re are no nvidia drivers active and when I goto the additional drivers manager, it just shows 2 completely different drivers from before now. I’m seriously considering just to upgrade to oneiric but I don’t think that would make any difference. Also, when I log into the “Ubuntu” session, it’s gnome 2 that shows 
not Unity.
output from
sudo lshw -C display
??
*-display
description: VGA compatible controller
product: G84 [GeForce 9500M GS]
vendor: nVidia Corporation
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0
version: a1
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm msi pciexpress vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
configuration: driver=nouveau latency=0
resources: irq:16 memory:c6000000-c6ffffff memory:d0000000-dfffffff memory:c4000000-c5ffffff ioport:2000(size=128)
Nope, you’re still using the nouveau drivers rather than the nvidia ones
What happens if you co into Synaptic and mark the nvidia-current package for reinstallation, then apply ?
Also, which version of nvidia-current is Synaptic showing ?