problems with NVidia drivers, and strange findings

[Dave W <nospam2@starband.net>]

I've been fighting the NVidia drivers on my box for what seems like
forever.  Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't.  Sometimes doing
make install on the NVidia-kernel source dir does the trick, and then
sometimes just rebooting after that "fixes" it is all it takes to get
dumped back in a terminal, with no X.

Tonight I noticed that root could run X, with accelerated video, with no
problem, so I made another user, test, and lo, test could run X with the
NVidia splash screen and accelerated features too.  So, it had to be
something in my user's directory.  I'm no expert, so I just looked
around at differences between test's home dir dot files and those in my
regular user's.  I noticed the contents of the .Xauthority file for my
regular user had old name of my computer in the midst of all the stuff
in the file, and the new one had the new name... so I just renamed
(rather than deleting) the .Xauthority file in my regular user's home
dir.  Did the same to the .xinitrc, since my regular user HAD one and my
new user, test, did not.  Killed X, started as a regular user, and X
came right up, NVidia splash screen and all.

I'm using 2.4.20, the 4191 drivers and GLX from tar.gz, and a Sid box. 
Any ideas?  

dave w