Couldn't find any existing thread solving my problem.
I'm using Xandros 3.0 but I'm posting thjis in a debian forum since it's a debian based distro...
After downloading the latest nvidia driver and done an apt-get on the source code for the kernel I tried to run the installer but it just won't work. It said something about I should make sure I have the same versions on my source code and the installed kernel. When I only extracted the nvidia source code though and tried a make install I got a bit more info. It said something like "unable to determine target kernel version". Why this? Xandros already had some nvidia modules installed with it but just editing the xorg.conf (not XFree86 here... ) to an nvidia configuration did not work. But does not matter since I would like to be able to compile the latest drivers from nvidia...
Anybody have a clue?

There is a page here: http://home.comcast.net/~andrex/Debi...tallation.html that describes several routes to installing the nvidia module.

What I did was recompile my kernel. There is a sticky at the top of this forum showing how to do that. Once you recompile the kernel, you can run the latest nvidia installer from nvidia.com.

You were right, re-compiling the kernel solved the problem, I just hope I got compiled with the right options...
But why couldn't the version be determined before I had compiled it myself, what happens during the normal install that is different?
Ahh well, my problem is solved for this time anyway... Thanks.

One problem consists though. I have to re-install the nvidia driver every time I reboot. If I try to enter x without installing the driver it fails to load X claiming that no screens are found but after installing, everything works smothely. I have had this problem once before on my old debian system but I can't remember how I solved it nor could I find any answer for my question searching the forums here and on nvidias site....

Edit /etc/modules and add "nvidia" so that the module is automatically loaded upon reboot. Good Luck!

Of course, that did it. How stupid of me not to think of that Ahh well, thank you for your help m_yates!

I have had a similar problem before. What I realized is that it wasn't the kernel source that I wanted... just the kernel headers.
I use a stock kernel from the installer. It is the following

minerva:~# uname -r
2.6.8-1-386

When i did it the wrong way I had installed something like the following with apt-get (kernel-source-2.6.8 - Linux kernel source for version 2.6.8 with Debian patches)

apt-get install kernel-source-2.6.8

but that kernel source doesn't consider all the things I have compiled in. What I need are the headers specific to my kernel which can be gotten like this (kernel-headers-2.6.8-1-386 - Linux kernel headers 2.6.8 on 386)

apt-get install kernel-headers-2.6.8-1-386

That is all you need. Nvidia installer will run now.

OMG the Nvidia installer is not the debian way
apt-get install nvidia-kernel-source and read the readme

Yea, I tried that originally, but my hardware was too new for the version of the nvidia drivers debian distributes. I had just bought a brand spankin new 6600 GT AGP and so I had to go with nvidia binaries. Trust me, I love the debian way, but I don't mind managing a few programs on my own like Nvidia drivers and java development type stuff.