yesterday I decided to install 32-bit Ubuntu on my 64-bit desktop, first of all, is that a problem?

After installing, i had around 270 updates to install, according to the update manager. I was having trouble launching a game with WINE, so I thought updating might help. After updating, I restarted my computer, and after a long while it showed me my desktop and the icon's on it, but I didn't get anything else. I didn't have the "taskbar" (not sure what it's called, sue me) on the left side, nor the bar at the top. I also received an error message saying some program had stopped working.

I decided to restart my computer again, and that was when it told me that i have to re-configure my drivers, or run in "Low Graphics" mode for one session, amongst other options. Well, I decided to try to revert to the "basic video drivers", which was an option it gave. Restarting the computer gave me the same problem as in the second paragraph.

After a few more restarts and a night of restless sleep, here I am trying to start my computer again, only to receive a black screen, and my monitor "going to sleep".

I'm sort of stumped here, being new to Ubuntu (desktop, at least) and I really hope this gets fixed without me having to install Ubuntu on yet another partition (I have three other partitions for various things already)

tl;dr: Black screen on boot after installing updates.