Well, I’m back on my machine, thanks mostly to the Super SuperUser MAL. We’re still not sure what all happened, but it turns out the nVidia driver situation was the least of my problems. Something else (maybe multiple something elses) still aren’t right, and a good bit of it seems to center on internet-related stuff. For example, Firefox says it’s installed, and I can see all the folders and files for it, but it won’t run nor uninstall. I also cannot install other browsers. A program called “Ekiga” is getting blamed for a lot of this, but I don’t understand why.
Anyway, it’s late, I’m tired, and now that I have a backup of my Firefox bookmarks in a safe place, I’m going to try to get a good night’s sleep so that I can try to wrangle with this mess more tomorrow. Thanks to all who offered help — it was much appreciated!
[Update 3/1:] MAL suspects a hard disk problem, so I’m not sure how much time I’m going to invest in troubleshooting today. It isn’t as though I’ve a shortage of things to do ...
I feel for you...
I had a hard drive turn into a brick a couple of months ago. My condolences, and it's good that you backed up. Do it often! I had several years worth of research on mine, and I would have been very upset if it had been lost. I lost a couple of days worth of stuff, but fortunately nothing unrecoverable.