So I updated my media center to Ubuntu Maverick 10.10 and surely my the nvidia driver broke.

A terminal login screen appeared after rebooting, and after some messing around I am not entirely sure what exactly I did that caused it to work again but I am listing all steps just in case:

First remove all traces of nvidia

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sudo apt-get remove --purge nvidia*
sudo rm -Rf /usr/lib/nvidia-current/

Next install the some stuff to make sure the nvidia driver module will compile

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sudo apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-generic
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates
sudo apt-get update

Now reinstall the nvidia driver

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sudo apt-get install nvidia-cg-toolkit nvidia-current nvidia-current-modaliases nvidia-settings
sudo update-alternatives --config gl_conf

Now after entering the last step make sure nvidia-current is selected here.
Now reboot and see if everything works again, if not try to delete the xorg.conf + reboot again (sorry I had to use a workaround without syntax highlighting to circumvent the mod security policy @ apache – don't worry you don't have to understand that part :P)

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sudo rm /etc/X11/xorg.conf
sudo reboot