and what do I do afterwards? I mean I am getting quite tired from restarting back and forth xp and ubuntu.

I tried the Nvidia thing but that had errors in pretty much every command.

Anyway, the gist of it is sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list. Delete the "#" from in front of all the lines that say "deb" (in particular you're looking for universe and mulitverse). Then hit Ctrl-X to exit (be sure to hit enter to save as /etc/apt/sources.list). sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade.

Then In this new file you've opened, put this Reboot

If this fails and you get too tired of rebooting and stuff, you certainly can re-install. Depends on how much you have invested in this install or whether you just want the practice. But the nice thing about Debian based distros are that you shouldn't ever have to re-install.

But it is tough when you're working on dual boot. That's why at work I'm using Cooperative Linux. It runs on top of Windows and gives me a full Debian install. You have to get x via VNC though, but it was pretty easy to do. I'd give it one last go with what I've written above.

Did you save your home directory on a separate partition? If you reinstall, you may go that route and have a /home, /, /swap, and a shared FAT32 that XP can see also (for sharing files). And I'm sure the newer Ubuntu has bug fixes and the like that will help ease this process a bit. But you'll probably have to follow the new Unofficial Ubuntu Guide http://easylinux.info/wiki/Ubuntu

Sorry I couldn't be more help! :(

lol, its a lot of help
I do have /home, /swap, and something else...
Its just way too overwhelming when I can't even remember ls lists whats in the directory.

Well, if you reinstall, you can probably salvage your home partition and just reinstall over the root partition. But you'll have to setup all your programs again...

Trust me when I say I had no programs to setup in the first place ;)

And is that possible to have a folder that can be shared by my XP and Linux?
Also, any book recommendations or guides? I am having crummy success at finding things that actually help a complete beginner.

Well, for Ubuntu, I would definitely use the Unofficial Ubuntu Guide. It will tell you step by step what to type to setup common things like your Nvidia card, java, flash, etc.

For just Newbie in general, you should google for "newbie CLI tutorial" and probably read up a bit on permissions. Really, I just learned by wanting to do something and then googling. Sometimes someone would have the same problem. Other times I would get sidetracked and learn something I wasn't expecting. :) The best thing I can say is to not be afraid of the CLI. For one thing, as a user you can't screw it up to badly. Be careful with sudo and root priveledges. Always backup files you work on as root.

http://linux-newbie.sunsite.dk/
http://www.tuxfiles.org/linuxhelp/cli.html

Oh yeah, and it is possible to share files between XP and linux. It needs to be a separate partition formated as fat32. The fstab line will be something like:

/dev/hda1 /mnt/shared vfat default,users,umask=0000 0 0

Of course, you'd mkdir /mnt/shared and then change /dev/hda1 to the proper partition, but that's the general format. Then you should just be able to mount /mnt/shared

Well, I can't do that right now because I am typing... using Ubuntu!
Your sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade got me to 1.10 and now everything works. I am ready to start learning...
Now, before I start looking at guides, I have to find a way to make the damn scroll work!

Can you post your /etc/apt/sources.list? (the output of more /etc/apt/sources.list) I'm just curious if you're actually upgraded to 5.10 or if you're actually just in an up-to-date 5.04. If you post the list, I can let you know for sure.

By the way, Congratulations! Nothing more satisfying than solving a problem on your own.

Damn, just an updated 1.04. Whatever, it will work for now
Also, Yeah, I solved the problem on my own... right after having the answer given to me by someone else :)

Nah, ya did good kid. :)

So if you were interested in updated everything, you would sudo gedit /etc/sources.list and change every "hoary" to "breezy". Then sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade.

If you do dist-upgrade to breezy, be sure that you're using the Unofficial Ubuntu Guide for Breezy as there are some minor differences that might give you grief.

Good luck. If you have any more problems, don't hesitate to post to the forums both here and the ubuntu forums. And when you feel confident enough, don't forget to help other people out too.