[Solved] - Tower's 1st [no, 3rd] Hard-Reset since clean-reinstall.

[leszek]

Per my reply to leszek, this directory is absent... not just empty, but non-existent. Is that bad?

Its an optional directory so not bad.
As for the issue itself can you show us the log for Xorg.0.log (in /var/log). If it really tries loading nouveau it needs it to be specified somewhere as usually the X-Server autodetects the graphics card and loads the appriopiate driver in this case intel.