ok, did that and the same result happen. I didn't see a mouse. As before a blinking underscore in the top left hand corner and under that is a white screen with broken green lines at the very bottom of the page. Should I keep posting Xorg.0.logs?

I wonder if this is anything relevant?

o The nvidia-tls libraries (/usr/lib/libnvidia-tls.so.x.y.z and
/usr/lib/tls/libnvidia-tls.so.x.y.z); these files provide thread
local storage support for the NVIDIA OpenGL libraries (libGL,
libGLcore, and libglx). Each nvidia-tls library provides support
for a particular thread local storage model (such as ELF TLS),
and the one appropriate for your system will be loaded at run time.

Before I reinstall the nvidia driver I removed files from the previous install. At boot time I've seen NV-tils doing some kind of load. I don't see the file load now.

driftboy:/usr/lib# ls /usr/lib/libnvidia-tls.so.x.y.z
ls: /usr/lib/libnvidia-tls.so.x.y.z: No such file or directory
driftboy:/usr/lib# ls /usr/lib/tls/libnvidia-tls.so.x.y.z
ls: /usr/lib/tls/libnvidia-tls.so.x.y.z: No such file or directory

also these files

Problems will arise if applications use the wrong version of a library.
This can be the case if there are either old libGL libraries or stale
symlinks left lying around. If you think there may be something awry
in your installation, check that the following files are in place
(these are all the files of the NVIDIA Accelerated Linux Driver Set,
plus their symlinks):

driftboy:/usr/lib# ls /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/drivers/nvidia_drv.o
ls: /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/drivers/nvidia_drv.o: No such file or directory
driftboy:/usr/lib# ls /usr/lib/libGL.so.x.y.z
ls: /usr/lib/libGL.so.x.y.z: No such file or directory
driftboy:/usr/lib# ls /usr/lib/libGL.so.x
ls: /usr/lib/libGL.so.x: No such file or directory
driftboy:/usr/lib# ls /usr/lib/libGL.so
ls: /usr/lib/libGL.so: No such file or directory
driftboy:/usr/lib# ls usr/lib/libGLcore.so.x.y.z
ls: usr/lib/libGLcore.so.x.y.z: No such file or directory
driftboy:/usr/lib# ls /usr/lib/libGLcore.so.x.y.z
ls: /usr/lib/libGLcore.so.x.y.z: No such file or directory
driftboy:/usr/lib# ls /usr/lib/libGLcore.so.x
ls: /usr/lib/libGLcore.so.x: No such file or directory
driftboy:/usr/lib# ls /lib/modules/`uname -r`/video/nvidia.o
ls: /lib/modules/2.6.23.1-custom/video/nvidia.o: No such file or directory
driftboy:/usr/lib# ls /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/video/nvidia.o
ls: /lib/modules/2.6.23.1-custom/kernel/drivers/video/nvidia.o: No such file or directory