To be honest I'm not completely sure what you are doing. I just
followed the directions from
http://home.comcast.net/~andrex/Debian-nVidia/ going "the Debian way"
using module-assistant. I used the stock 2.6.12 debian kernel and
it all worked without a hitch. Then I updated the X server
configurations "The Debian way" (with dpkg-reconfigure) except I'm
running xorg instead of xfree86. Parts 3b,3c I didn't even have to do
since I already had a GUI going it was just using VGA @ 640x480 so 3b
was done and I tried 3c by rebooting instead (the lazy way out, but it
works).
The one thing to keep in mind, which you can probably skip with some
appropriate command line flags that I don't know, is that when doing
the module-assistant thing you need to be running the kernel that you
are trying to build the module for.
Aethon