Comment 2 for bug 226015

The nvidia drivers were installed via restricted drivers manager on 7.10.

Seems that the situation is more alike other cases I've seen on some
forums. After reinstalling the restricted modules, doing

sudo apt-get install linux-restricted-modules-2.6.24-17-generic --reinstall

I could load the module

sudo nvidia-xconfig && sudo modprobe nvidia && sudo /etc/init.d/gdm start

and X appeared. The problem, now, is that this configuration seems
nonpersistent. I mean, after restarting the system, the kernel is,
again, unable to load the nvidia module -- seems that it can't find
some file on /lib/modules/2.6.24-17-generic/volatile -- forcing,
again, the reinstallation of the restricted modules.