Mint Installation Blues: From looping login to no login

[jalong]

Hi All. New user here. I've encountered 2 problems installing Mint 14 Cinnamon, one of which I "solved," though the solution brought up another issue. The machine in question is an Asus G55VW with a Nvidia GTX 660M, Intel i7-3610QM, 12 GB RAM, Athereos AR9485 Wireless, Atheros AR 8151 GB ethernet.

1. Looping login after fresh install. Once a username/pass is entered at the login screen, the X server starts then crashes, bringing you back to the login screen. Log file ~/.xsession.errors showed a "segmentation fault," which did not help me much. X server was using the video driver Nouveau. What I eventually discovered after hours of searching log files was that the problem seemed totally unrelated to the X server: if I was connected to the internet by either lan or wireless, the x server crashed. If I ctrl-alt-F1'd to a terminal and used 'fskill block all', I would be taken to the desktop. I replicated this behaviour numerous times on both Cinnamon and Mint KDE. I always had to switch to the console and block lan/wireless before I could log in.

2. Once I installed the Nvidia proprietary drivers, there were no login problems at boot. Using autologin, it would boot straight to the desktop. The problem now is that I can never get to the login screen. If I kill X server or log out, x server starts, crashes, goes to the full screen terminal and tries again to start x server. It tries this three times before showing a text box saying, "Failed to start the X server...." The error message is "Fatal server error: no screens found." The Xorg.0.log expands on this with the error message "Screen(s) found, but none have a usable configuration." I eventually reach the fullscreen terminal where I am informed that X server is disabled until configuration is fixed. The machine has to be rebooted to reach the desktop.

Question: if my configuration is "bad," why does the computer boot beautifully to the desktop? The only time the configuration seems to be bad is when I logout or the X server is otherwise killed..

I've spent three days reading logfiles, googling error messages, etc. (good learning experience) but I am now stumped. I've tried other Nvidia drivers. Can anyone offer any suggestions?

/etc/X11/xorg.conf:

# nvidia-xconfig: X configuration file generated by nvidia-xconfig
# nvidia-xconfig: version 310.14 (buildmeister@swio-display-x86-rhel47-06.nvidia.com) Tue Oct 9 13:04:01 PDT 2012

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Layout0"
Screen 0 "Screen0"
InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
EndSection

Section "Files"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
# generated from default
Identifier "Mouse0"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "auto"
Option "Device" "/dev/psaux"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
# generated from default
Identifier "Keyboard0"
Driver "kbd"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor0"
VendorName "Unknown"
ModelName "Unknown"
HorizSync 28.0 - 33.0
VertRefresh 43.0 - 72.0
Option "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Device0"
Driver "nvidia"
VendorName "NVIDIA Corporation"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Device0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
EndSubSection
EndSection

Thanks in advance!