NVIDIA Drivers activated but not in use

[SanjiSasuke]

So on a fresh install of Ubuntu my eMachines W3050 came with an Nvidia GeForce4 MX graphics card. I tried running nvidia-xconfig, but upon restart it forced the resolution to 640x480. I restored it by using:

sudo apt-get purge xserver-xorg
sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-video-all
sudo reboot

After, I installed Nvidia 173 drivers (not 100% sure if this is the right version) but it remains 'Activated but not in use' in the Additional Drivers. How would I fix this so it is using the drivers?

Edit:

Forgot a few things:
12.04
Tryed nvidia-xconfig again, it yields no change at all now, nvidia-settings just says to run nvidia-xconfig if I try to use it.

xorg

# nvidia-xconfig: X configuration file generated by nvidia-xconfig
# nvidia-xconfig:  version 295.40  (buildmeister@swio-display-x86-rhel47-04.nvidia.com)  Thu Apr  5 22:33:07 PDT 2012


Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "Layout0"
    Screen      0  "Screen0" 0 0
    InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
    InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
EndSection

Section "Files"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"

    # generated from default
    Identifier     "Mouse0"
    Driver         "mouse"
    Option         "Protocol" "auto"
    Option         "Device" "/dev/psaux"
    Option         "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
    Option         "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"

    # generated from default
    Identifier     "Keyboard0"
    Driver         "kbd"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier     "Monitor0"
    VendorName     "Unknown"
    ModelName      "Unknown"
    HorizSync       21.0 - 83.0
    VertRefresh     56.0 - 76.0
    Option         "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Device0"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Screen0"
    Device         "Device0"
    Monitor        "Monitor0"
    DefaultDepth    24
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Ubuntu setting (w/ unity) works.

Although I am using a 16:9 monitor it only offers 4:3 resolutions. (not much of a problem but maybe useful?)

[audwan]

I had the same problem, and in my case I fixed it by removing nvidia from a blacklist.

grep "nvidia" /etc/modprobe.d/*

Found that nvidia was blacklisted in bumblebee.conf that I previously tried out. So I just removed it and rebooted.

sudo rm /etc/modproble.d/bumblebee.conf