Screen goes blank, or pixelated

Ok Ill try to be brief but also explain everything Ive done. I have two HDD's on one I have 9.04 booted off a live CD which works woderfull. On the other I have 10.04 which installed off a live Cd ok after selecting nomodeset (three days to figure that out). But when i try to load 10.04 it shuts my monitor back down again. I found that i can edit the grub loader by replacing 'quiet splash' with 'nomodeset' and that gets me to a command line. If I type startx at this point it goes into the graphical interface but it's way over pixelated, cant make anything out. If, on the other hand, from the command line I try a sudo apt-get update I get nothing but failures. Ive tried the forums and other resources but don't seem to be making any headway. I believe the problem child is my nvidia 7300 gt. I have a computer that I built 7 yrs ago( i know old, but still not bad). Because I know my 9.04 live CD works fine I used Dban to completely wipe my drives before either install to make sure no residual ... stuff... was left behind. If you need more info let me know.