After a lot of work I have got Ubuntu 14.04 (32bit) working on my laptop. I had trouble with the login splash screen freezing, but I resolved it by logging-in in recovery mode and choosing an nvidia rather than Xorg driver. I chose at random and it worked :-) ! (See screen shot).
Please can someone explain the different Nvidia drivers to me? Does it matter which I choose (except Xorg which caused the freezing). Have I optimized?
Seeing as I had several problems with the install, are there any general checks (not just graphics drivers) that are recommendable to see that all is in order? Superficially everything seems fine. I am, afterall, posting from the said machine now.