I've had 10.04 running nice and smoothly for a long time and figured I'd update to 12.04.

My system has since become a nightmare. I can only access the system going through Recovery Mode. Regular boot just reboots and drops back off at the grub menu.

At first I thought it had to do with some of the SELinux configurations I was messing with after the update, so I took a gamble that that was what it was and I wiped the entire machine and did a fresh install of 10.04, and then proceed to update to 12.04 through the manager.

And lucky me...same exact problem.

So I looked around to see if it was a driver issue and it turns out that 12.04 and XORG has caused many driver issues for my Nvidia FX 5200.

So...I've spent the past two days doing every single recommendation through these forums and others.

I've installed the legacy 173.14.35 driver... (no change)
I've attempted to use 'system>>additional drivers' and all it's permutations to allow different drivers. (no change)
I've downgraded Xorg, because apparently 173.xx and 12.04 can play fine, but not with the Xorg. (from here http://askubuntu.com/questions/16405...n-ubuntu-12-04)

Well the last one left me with X not starting at login when I try to go through Recovery Mode... (black console only view)

I'm getting really frustrated here.

Is there something I haven't tried? Did incorrectly? Misunderstood?

It'd be great to a useful machine again...

I'd appreciate any help, thanks!