Nvidia 9300GS - can't install drivers that work

[papajon]

I have a new HP desktop with AMD64 Phenom. It uses the Nvidia 8200 single chipset and it came with a 9300GS card installed and vista. I installed Ubuntu 8.10 x64 and it works fine but for 2 problems:
1. I can't seem to get an Nvidia driver loaded that will work. I have tried 173.x, 177.x, 180.x. It just boots to a command line and I have to copy my kernel backup to get back to x.I had a problem with the aperature at boot and got an error "Your bios doesn't leave a aperature memory hole" I fixed that by adding "iommu=memaper=2,noaperature,noagp" to my kernel line in menu.lst. I fear that may have some connection to my video issues. Anybody familiar with a fix for this setup??
2. it doesn't recognise the sound chip after a while. I suspect that may be relted to the aperature fix also.

Any thoughts are very welcome. If anyone needs additional info please ask.

Thanks.