In brief:
My display is shifted 8 inches to the left and loops around, but the middle of the desktop is not visible. From left to right the monitor shows (right side of desktop)(vertical black bar)(left side of desktop). I have formatted and reinstalled, and also swapped out video cards and the display is the same.

This was a fresh install, previous system was FC6, but I threw in an old GeForce FX 5200, and my first objective was to get s-video out working. What I did was:

added the livna-release-7.rpm
yum install kmod-nvidia (I guessed I had a standard kernel...)

I logged off and logged on as root, and then my display was off. I got to a console and tried nvidia-config-display enable, and it said it was already enabled. I rebooted, got a failure to start xserver or something along those lines, and I walked through some basic prompts. This did restore the display, but I could only get 800x600 resolution. I played with the then present Nvidia control app, didn't get any results, and decided to reinstall... and not do that again. The display is fine during the install until after the reboot, then the display messes up again. While booting, the Fedora screen that says 'booting Fedora' looks fine, it's just once it gets to the splash screen. Thinking somehow some settings were retained (even though I removed Linux partitions during the install), I removed the partitions with partition magic and tried again. No luck. I re-seated the video card, no luck. Swapped video cards, no luck.

Thanks in advance

see if the following helps:

Thanks. That did get me back to a totally viewable desktop. I ran that command, received no output, rebooted, and went through the prompts (it couldn't start the xserver because it couldn't find module "nvidia") and now I'm back to the point where I can only get 800x600 resolution. But that's still a huge improvement!

I'm going to do some more trial and error to get this card working correctly now that I have a command I can use if I screw things up again. Let me know if you have any suggestions.

Thanks again.

I've been playing with this more in my spare time, and have found that the display problem I'm having seems to be that I just can't display 1024x768. I also remembered that this card was manufactured by MSI, and I don't know if that makes a difference. Basically, after I install an nvidia driver, after reboot, it prompts me for a resolution to use from 640X480 up to 1280x1024 or bigger. My monitor can only handle 1024x768, so I go with that setting or lower, but get a display issue when I use 1024x768. I can select 1024x768, experience the problem, then change my resolution to something lower, then 1024x768 is no longer an option - even after editing my xorg.conf file.

It also looks to me like the screen before I log in is displayed at 1024x768 without problem.

1024x768 worked before I fiddled with the driver, so I guess I haven't been able to restore this machine to its original operating condition - even after a clean install with partitions removed (which is also boggling)

I've tried a few other things. This time, I installed kmod-nvidia.i686. That produced the same thing. (last time I guessed on my kernel, but this time used a uname -a to get it, then specifically matched that up when I did a yum search nvidia) I found a post that suggested to install legacy drivers. I used the command:
'yum install kmod-nvidia-legacy.i686'

it said there was a conflict with xorg-x11-drv-nvidia, so is used the command:
yum remove xorg-x11-drv-nvidia

then it installed ok, but the outcome was the same. another post said-
Also, if you're running any kernels released after January 26th 2004, make sure you have the kernel source downloaded and installed correctly. The installer will need it to compile the drivers correctly.

This is the last lead I have - how do I find out if I have the kernel source downloaded?

Thanks in advance.