How to set up nVidia driver to Ubuntu Hardy on Lenovo T61p laptop

1. Download the latest nVidia driver from nVidia site. The driver should be 32 bit Linux (assuming you are running 32-bit version and not the AMD-64 -version), Quadro FX570M if you are running IBM T61p laptop. Otherwise (on other machines) select the appropriate display controller from the menu. Save the file to a location that you can easily access when you are in text mode (mandatory step).

2. Boot the Ubuntu (mandatory).
When the password dialog appears, press CTRL+ALT+F1
When text mode appears and asks for login, log in with your username and password.

3. Become root (mandatory):
sudo su
and then give your password

4. Stop the gdm (replace with kdm if you are running Kubuntu or kdm-kde4 if you are running Kubuntu-KDE4 remix)
/etc/init.d/gdm stop

5. If you don't have compilation environment, you can install it by (optional):
apt-get update
apt-get install gcc g++ glibc

6. Uninstall now the nvidia open source driver (mandatory):
dpkg --purge xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-nvidia

Now you have no display driver installed on your system at all, you can't start X.

Go to the directory where you have the nVidia driver package located.
It is named something like NVIDIA-something.run.
TYPE (mandatory):
chmod +x NVIDIA*.run

Now execute the package (mandatory):
./NVIDIA.....run (replace .... with the correct filename which depends on which driver version you have).

Accept license agreement.
Answer to the question if the installer wants to download precompiled kernel module from nVidia site that "No".
It may state that you have already a nVidia driver installed and if you want to uninstall the driver first. Answer yes to that kind of question.
The installer asks also if you want to modify the xorg.conf for the driver. Answer yes to that kind of question.
Your new driver is now successfully installed if you didn't receive any errors in the process.

You can now restart the gdm to log in the system without rebooting:
/etc/init.d/gdm restart

If you are using external display in addition to the laptop screen, you may need to reboot to get it functioning correctly. You need to have both the external display and laptop display turned on when you boot the computer for the nVidia driver to autoconfigure it properly.

If your display settings still aren't correct, you can edit them with nvidia-settings (optional):
Open terminal window
sudo nvidia-settings

Change the settings to appropriate and save to xorg.conf. Please note that you may need to run the nvidia-settings from terminal window instead of clicking the icon or menu item which launches nvidia-settings because in order to write to the xorg.conf you need to be root and Ubuntu wasn't designed to support the nVidia settings application as it has its own (but sometimes not working) installers for binary drivers (the envy package which may work for some, but at least didn't work for me with IBM T61p and Hardy).