The system is still behaving exactly the same, and I have not received any further direction on how to fix it. Is there another piece of information I need to provide?
Update: No response from the gentleman who was helping me, I got tired of waiting and just did a complete wipe, repartition, and reinstall.
Installed the latest nvidia driver through the additional drivers application, but still have the same behaviour - underscanning saved to xorg.conf will not be used at reboot because xorg.conf disappears at reboot. Google Chrome is still launching in what looks like 640 X 480 mode (but nothing else is), the screen is extended past the border of the screen to the right and down, and the mouse pointer/cursor/arrow is still using a hotspot that is 35 pixels down and to the right of the actual arrow tip. The screen goes back to normal after I re-set the underscanning on the Nvidia control panel, but that change (saved to xorg.conf) will go away at every reboot. That is consistent with the bug report here. I cannot believe that bug report is just wrong, but maybe I just don't understand the issues I am having.
Current dkms status says:
bbswitch, 0.7, 3.13.0-55-generic, x86_64: installed
nvidia-331, 331.113, 3.13.0-55-generic, x86_64: installed
nvidia-331-uvm, 331.113, 3.13.0-55-generic, x86_64: installed
After the major system error resulting from using the latest kernel, I am hesitant to try it again.
Any other suggestions before I try that again?
I followed the suggested solution below, now all I get is a black screen, and no further instructions from the gentleman who was helping me. Does anyone else with experience on this issue have any idea what the next step is?
Ubuntu 14.04, Nvidia GeForce GT 440.
64-bit system.
the 'duplicate of' link is not the same... That solution has an answer that says to use 'sudo apt-get install nvidia-304 nvidia-304-updates', but one of the highest upvoted answers says to NEVER DO THAT. I've also tried that, and I get daily updates that report System Problems with that driver, then sent to a bug report that is 18 months old, and is still receiving 'not fixed' reports as recently as this morning.
dkms status
bbswitch, 0.7, 3.13.0-24-generic, x86_64: installed
bbswitch, 0.7, 3.13.0-43-generic, x86_64: installed
bbswitch, 0.7, 3.13.0-44-generic, x86_64: installed
bbswitch, 0.7, 3.13.0-45-generic, x86_64: installed
bbswitch, 0.7, 3.13.0-46-generic, x86_64: installed
bbswitch, 0.7, 3.13.0-48-generic, x86_64: installed
bbswitch, 0.7, 3.13.0-49-generic, x86_64: installed
bbswitch, 0.7, 3.13.0-51-generic, x86_64: installed
bbswitch, 0.7, 3.13.0-52-generic, x86_64: installed
bbswitch, 0.7, 3.13.0-53-generic, x86_64: installed
bbswitch, 0.7, 3.13.0-54-generic, x86_64: installed
nvidia-331, 331.113, 3.13.0-45-generic, x86_64: installed
nvidia-331-uvm, 331.113, 3.13.0-45-generic, x86_64: installed
virtualbox, 4.3.10, 3.13.0-45-generic, x86_64: installed
virtualbox, 4.3.10, 3.13.0-53-generic, x86_64: installed
virtualbox, 4.3.10, 3.13.0-54-generic, x86_64: installed
dkms status
to your question.