I was able to get my high resolution screen back. It was resolved by reinstalling the kernal module headers which caused in turn the missing or clobbered driver to be reinstalled. This didn't work immediately, in fact right after I tried the fix, suggested on the community forums, I actually lost the highest resolution of the three screens I had and it looked for a moment that I was going to be totally out of luck.
But rebooting in recovery mode and selecting 'Fix Xserver' from the menu seemed to bring it back to where it was before I enabled the version of the Nvidia driver it first installed. When I got back my biggest low resolution at the second restart I selected the recommended driver and rebooted. When I got back up I was finally able to select the screen size I wanted, and had a week ago, it is slightly less then what I had but I got some cute features available from the video card turned on. I went back on the Community Fourm thanked the person who had given me this fix and said I would contribute to the forum, something i had already done that day. I might open an issue about the sud apt-get kernel-modules-$(uname -r) installing the wrong version of the driver and how I fixed it.
The install did this:
Setting up linux-headers-2.6.27-17-server (2.6.27-17.46) ...
Examining /etc/kernel/header_postinst.d.
run-parts: executing /etc/kernel/header_postinst.d/dkms
* Running DKMS auto installation service for kernel 2.6.27-17-server
* nvidia (173.14.12)...
nvidia (173.14.12): Installing module.
When in fact the correct cofiguration (in Xorg.log) is
(II) "extmod" will be loaded by default.
(II) "dbe" will be loaded by default.
(II) "glx" will be loaded. This was enabled by default and also specified in the config file.
(II) "freetype" will be loaded by default.
(II) "record" will be loaded by default.
(II) "dri" will be loaded by default.
(II) LoadModule: "glx"
(II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/extensions//libglx.so
(II) Module glx: vendor="NVIDIA Corporation"
compiled for 4.0.2, module version = 1.0.0
Module class: X.Org Server Extension
(II) NVIDIA GLX Module 180.11 Wed Nov 26 11:17:21 PST 2008
(II) Loading extension GLX
(II) LoadModule: "extmod"
The color of the background should be a pale yellow with a tinge of green ( 0x ECFFB3 ). Which it is. I used a web page that I was able to copy, set the hex color that looked close ro what I wanted and go. I am going to set the text to a medium blue ( 0x 002EBB ) which worked.
I am still only able to use the low resolution screens on Ubuntu 8.10 because the Nvidia module refuses to load in the kernel. I know its a driver problem because I was able to get the high resolution screens to work with Windows Vista and with a live Linux distro, Knoppix 5.1.1. There are a lot of bugs placed on Nvidia driver problems and it is looking like the boards are moving to being less supported. I am considering dumping this distro and finding one that supports my card. I did add my info to one of the bugs and because I had the high resolution working a week ago, and I don't know what happened to cause it to suddenly go away as I was working last Friday night, I expect to get a fix or I will install another distro.