Caot coect to the internet in order to install Nvidia drivers

Hey all, forgive me for the long post. I've done and tried a lot of things over the last two weeks of trying to figure this out on my own with google and have finally gotten to the point where I need help.

First, let me explain that I can't copy and paste code/results/what-have-you from the desktop with Ubuntu currently installed on it because I can't use it outside of the terminal (normal boot) or Recovery Mode. So until I get a functional GUI (which I'm under the impression requires functioning video drivers), all my troubleshooting and reporting has to be done by hand. (I'm on a separate laptop right now)

So, on to the problem.

First my biggest problem is the Nvidia driver issue. I boot into a black screen, and if I press some combination of Alt+Ctrl+Fn (some F-number key, but I'm not sure which one) I get the Low Graphics error (all of the options on the prompt loop back to the original screen, so there isn't a solution there). If I press Alt+Ctrl+F1 I get into a text-only interface where I can login successfully and then start using commands (I think that's the terminal, but I'm not sure). All of my debugging and gathering information and trying things has been done via this terminal screen. Occasionally my monitor will flash and pop up a movable cursor before flashing back into either a blinking cursor that doesn't do anything or a black screen. From there I can just Alt+Ctrl+F1 back to the terminal and continue typing/reading where I left off.

So the first thing I tried was the nomodeset from the Grub (I think?) menu, by selecting ubuntu-normal, pressing e, and doing the quiet splash edit. This doesn't do anything except prevent me from getting into the what I'm calling terminal but not sure what it's actually called. I end up having to Ctrl+Alt+Delete to reboot and start over with something else.

Next I tried the Recovery Mode boot, but Enabling Networking either bugs out the Recovery Menu (I can't select other options without the screen breaking and filling with previously used commands, like I'm in a terminal typing and using the up arrow to scroll through previous commands, it's a weird graphical glitch that doesn't allow me to do anything but reboot via Ctrl+Alt+Delete) or it says 'Starting NetworkManager' (or something along those lines) and does nothing for a very long time (half an hour is average) before sending me back to the Recovery Menu.

I can't sudo apt-get update because I get a 'temporary failure to resolve' error when trying to coect to us.ubuntu.com or security.ubuntu.com (forgive me if either of these are wrong, I'm typing from memory and don't have the actual errors in front of me right now).

I can ping localhost, but I can't reach any network outside of my own modem/coection/what-have-you, and traceroute just tells me to install a package that contains it, but I can't because I get the same coection error as above.

I tried to fix the coection and found out that instead of eth0 or wlan0, my wireless device is called wlp3s0 and with that information I was able to use wpa_supplicant to force a coection and that works but it doesn't stick. It coects, discoects, coects, discoects, etc etc etc without the command ever finishing. I left it up last night ruing while I slept just to see what happens, and woke up to it in the same place as I left it (a loop of coects and discoects) and have to force stop it to continue trying anything else (which discoects me even if I had previously be coected) with Ctrl+C. The wpa_supplicant conf file is only setup with the name of the wireless (SSID, whatever it's called) and the password.

Extra information that may be relevant:
2 hard drives, but I can't touch my 1TB because I'm trying to set up this 500GB so I can back that one up before reinstalling windows (I got a glitch I can't fix without wiping from the last update which locked me out of my account because there are no power options in the log-in screen and I can't force a shift+restart like you're supposed to do to fix it, and the windows 10 recovery mode won't let me just refresh the operating system without wiping the files, so blah).
I've lost count of how many times I've had to reinstall ubuntu on my 500GB for various different errors I was getting, and yeah I probably should try to use a different hard drive at this point but I don't have another hard drive to use. The live-usb runs fine, if that means anything.
I finally got it to install without any errors by partitioning the 500GB in a very specific way.

I have a / partition (operating system is installed onto)
/boot partition
/home partition
and a swap partition
Without the /boot partition the bootloader wasn't installing, and without the /home partition I was getting a read-only error that resulted in the install failing every time.

Currently I have successfully booted into Recovery Mode, ran grub bootloader update, then repair broken packages (inteet error, it quit on it's own and retued me to the recovery menu), ran enable networking (no error or bug breaking this time, but also no confirmation of success), and have retued to repair broken packages where I am currently stuck at 50% [Coecting to security.ubuntu.com] [us.archive.ubuntu.com] and then get the temporary failure resolving errors and it loops back to try again. Been there for about an hour now.

Sorry for the tons of information, I've just tried a lot of stuff up to now and wanted to make sure everyone was filled in on what I've tried.

Thanks,
Chey