I recently bought a new laptop (Asus X53S series) that has two GPUs, an NVidia GeForce GT 540M and an integrated Intel GPU (I believe it's called Intel HD graphics 3000). I installed the recommended restricted NVidia drivers after a clean Ubuntu 11.10 install. In the 'additional drivers' program I get the message: "This driver is enabled and in use", although when I try to open the NVidia X Server Settings it says "You do not appear to be using the NVIDIA X driver." which seems to be the case since Ubuntu only starts using Unity 2D.

I've had the same issue in 11.04 and I was forced to use the nouveau driver just to get unity working, but since I get quite a few crashes with it I really want to get the propriety driver working this time around. Since I've never had this issue with older laptops, I can only assume it is caused due to the dual gpu configuration. How do I get Ubuntu to use the propriety drivers, or is there any workaround to get the integrated Intel GPU to be ignored by Ubuntu?

Alternatively, has anyone got Unity working with a similar setup?