Just to check, I ran: sgfxi -n
and it offers nouveau, no problem. So did: sgfxi -N nouveau

Make sure when you become root that you use: su -

make sure to include the dash, -, otherwise all kinds of odd issues happen.

But strip out your nvidia junk first, then try to reinstall nvidia with sgfxi after a reboot.

that's about all I can tell you.
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I will tell you what I did to fix.
But first,, failed as apt could not find nvidia.
So, since I am not a computer buff and was anxious to access some documents that were required for business in my storage drive, which is another physical drive, I decided to reinstall system from netinst CD.
First I shunned the possiblity of installing a desktop environment as recommended by a post that i read long time ago on this blog. Then I decided to shun possibiity of installing all generic drivers and selected only targeted drivers.
When I got to a prompt installed smxi.zip and from smxi installed base + KDE (old dog is resistant to change and lazy).
Install failed to launch a desktop, so I had to start over, this time I selected all generic drivers, which probably installed nouveau, and, when I got the choice to install a desktop environment installed KDE + plasma, the install obviously took much longer, but nouveau brought up the desktop, yay!!
Afterwards, I attempted to install nvidia via sfgxi, it complained about missing firmware for nouveau, this could not bring up the desktop so I launched , installed via synaptic some missing packages for nvidia including kernel dkms, relaunched sfgxi from terminal as root, it went through its routine, complained about a previous installation of nvidia, but all in all, after reboot got a pleasant desktop with nvidia.
Techadmin, please don't be mad at me.
The netinst CD works really well, I selected expert install, manual partitioning,and some other stuff that gave me more freedom for choices, and it worked, writing from reborn computer.
Best regards.
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