Ubuntu :: Desktop Does Not Display With Hi-res Nvidia

I'm running Ubuntu 10.10 on a Dell m65 mobile precision laptop w/ nNvidia card.

I booted up my system. Login screen appears. I login. I can hear the login sounds. I can hear my notifications telling me I have email. My mouse works. My keyboard works. But I don't see my desktop. All that's in front of me is the background that I had at login time. I don't see the panels nor the desktop icons. I don't see the interactive grouping/stretchy rectangle thingy when clicking and dragging on the desktop.

I've never experienced this before. I never had a problem w/ this before. I had always been running in hi-res mode.

I did update my system earlier this morning and it wasn't until this afternoon I had to reboot it.

These are the things I've tried, none of which worked.

1) Downgraded my nVidia driver version

2) Changed the xorg.conf to a generic version with basic resolution (I had been running 1900x1200)

3) Tried restarting nautilus. I did this from the command prompt. I just get "Failed to contact configuration server; the most common cause is a missing or misconfigured D-Bus session bus daemon.

4) Tried an older kernel

5) Turned off compiz

These are the things I've tried and they do work

1) Boot to recovery menu. Run in failsafeX mode. I can see my desktop but everything is huge.
2) Run Desktop Edition (Safe Mode). I can see my desktop but everything is huge. I also notice that my desktop icons had been moved around. I think I was doing this when I couldn't see them!!
3) When in Safe Mode, I can configure my nVidia settings to be hi-res. But I can't these settings to stick when booting to normal mode.