Ubuntu nvidia driver

Jockey is telling me that I'm not using the recommended nvidia driver, even though I'm pretty sure that I am. This was a particularly annoying bug because I discovered it while trying to recover from what was probably a heat-induced slow-down of video.

Apparently, the problem is visible here in the update-alternatives:

root@potato:/var/log# update-alternatives --get-selections | grep nvidia
gl_conf                        manual   /usr/lib/nvidia-current/ld.so.conf
root@potato:/var/log# update-alternatives --config gl_conf
There are 3 choices for the alternative gl_conf (providing /etc/ld.so.conf.d/GL.conf).

  Selection    Path                                Priority   Status
------------------------------------------------------------
  0            /usr/lib/nvidia-current/ld.so.conf   9700      auto mode
  1            /usr/lib/mesa/ld.so.conf             500       manual mode
  2            /usr/lib/nvidia-173/ld.so.conf       9620      manual mode
* 3            /usr/lib/nvidia-current/ld.so.conf   9700      manual mode

Press enter to keep the current choice[*], or type selection number: 
root@potato:/var/log# 

nvidia-current is listed twice. So jockey says this:

root@potato:/var/log# jockey-text -l
xorg:nvidia_173 - NVIDIA accelerated graphics driver (Proprietary, Disabled, Not in use)
xorg:nvidia_current - NVIDIA accelerated graphics driver (Proprietary, Enabled, Not in use)

I'm expecting output that looks more like this:

root@weasel:~# jockey-text -l
/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.6/gtk-2.0/gtk/__init__.py:57: GtkWarning: could not open display
  warnings.warn(str(e), _gtk.Warning)
xorg:nvidia_173 - NVIDIA accelerated graphics driver (Proprietary, Disabled, Not in use)
xorg:nvidia_96 - NVIDIA accelerated graphics driver (Proprietary, Disabled, Not in use)
xorg:nvidia_current - NVIDIA accelerated graphics driver (Proprietary, Enabled, In use)

Maybe I just need to make sure that the "auto mode" is selected. Here are the alternatives from a working system:

root@weasel:~# update-alternatives --config gl_conf
There are 2 choices for the alternative gl_conf (providing /etc/ld.so.conf.d/GL.conf).

  Selection    Path                                Priority   Status
------------------------------------------------------------
* 0            /usr/lib/nvidia-current/ld.so.conf   9700      auto mode
  1            /usr/lib/mesa/ld.so.conf             500       manual mode
  2            /usr/lib/nvidia-current/ld.so.conf   9700      manual mode

Press enter to keep the current choice[*], or type selection number: 

It is still listed twice, but auto mode is selected instead of manual.

Darn, that didn't help any:

root@potato:/var/log# jockey-text -l
xorg:nvidia_173 - NVIDIA accelerated graphics driver (Proprietary, Disabled, Not in use)
xorg:nvidia_current - NVIDIA accelerated graphics driver (Proprietary, Enabled, Not in use)

A solution from the forums is to use synaptic to perform re-install of the nvidia drivers. That seems to avoid the bug with jockey.