Having problems installing Ubuntu
 

BACKGROUND
OK... so some time ago (about a year and a half) I got the urge to create my own computer. The getting the parts and putting them together was easy. Then my friend gave me a copy of Windows XP Media edition which I installed with out a problem. It booted up and every thing was fine. At the time I did not have internet so I did not authorize it. So then I turned it on one day after I had got it set up to the internet and it said windows 32 file missing... Well I think it was that file... might of been called WIN32... yeah pretty sure. at this point I gave up and bought a Very nice laptop... sorry back to the back story.... now about three days ago I made a Ubuntu booting disk thing... and I tried to install it on to the old desktop...

TECH
So I just realized you might wonder what I am running under the hood.

MOTHERBOARD...well I am not quite sure what the motherboard is called but here is what i do know.
CPU... is an AMD Athlon 64 ... not a clue what speed it is
RAM... I only got 1 GB of DDR2 ram plaining on shelling out cash for another stick of ram if i can get Ubuntu working.
Graphics card ... none i just use whats built into the motherboard.
Hard drive... Some thing by SEAGATE I think... I know it is 360GB

and I hooked it all up to a dinosaur of a monitor you know the kind we had back before monitors were flat.

PROBLEM
Ok now we finally get to the problem at hand... If you have read this far I thank you...Ok so I had popped the Ubuntu boot disk( which I made on a DVD on my laptop)then clicked install, and thats when the screen turned weird... the center or the screen is clear as day but the right and left halves have these vertical lines that show odd bits of the screen from another location... it's quite hard to explain. test lines do not show up when I try to install in Safe Graphics mode( found that mode by hitting F4 on that initial option screen. but the screen is only the first problem. The REAL problem is after I fill out all that info( area, languege, name , password, I keep choosing to wipe Window XP off of the comp and only put on Ubuntu (Since it failed the first time it now say Ubuntu instead of windows XP... I assume this is because it deleted windows and put some of Ubuntu onto my comp.)) After all of that it starts to install it lags on 5% for a long while then starts to move up and at like 25% - 80% then it freezes and the screen becomes like I stated earlier but with the whole screen. HELP ME.... PLEASE.

OTHER NOTES
umm....I wanted to say something else... but hmmm was it.... OH! I remember now. when filling out the form ( the area, languege, name , password stuff) if I hit quit I takes my to this Ubuntu desktop thing which I can use to get to the internet(Firefox ... ugh I prefer Chrome). being new to Ubuntu I do not know if this is what the real Ubuntu desktop looks like but it has a bar on the top and it has the time and stuff and options and a bar on the bottom which lets me jump from thing to thin like with Window.

THANK YOU
thanks for the time you spent reading this... I hope you can help me out... if you need more info just ask...
OH! And sorry for any errors in speech and grammar I have been up for like 28 hours between work, school and getting this computer working.

dont know if this will help but if you get the list use ubuntu without changing your computer,install ubuntu,check disk for errors,etc first check your disk for errors then try ubuntu this will give you the ubuntu desktop and you can install from there hope this helps.If this dosent work try installing straight from the disk,also there might be a config error with your bios look up your mother board model number and then google the number abut installing ubuntu,Sometimes this helps.It can be a bit of a bitch to get going sometimes but once you get it going you will never look back.Post your mother board model name and number and i will look it up my self if that helps.Cheers

The lines on the screen are probably saying your horizontal refresh is wrong. This means the monitor can do, for example, 50khz, but you are giving it 60Khz
Try this
grep HorizSync /etc/X11/xorg.conf

What does it say? If it's not there,we will have to add it.

Yes. This is the default look and feel of Ubuntu and how it will look once you get it installed. Of course, there are lots of ways to make it look better once you are up and running.

I agree with Mick's suggestion. At the boot menu, choose the option "Try Ubuntu without making any changes to your computer". Once you have it booted up, then you can open a terminal (Applications | Accessories | Terminal) and run the grep command suggested by business_kid.

Once your display issue is ironed out, installation should be very simple. I am a former Win XP user and I am very happy with the Ubuntu experience. My main machine at home runs Linux exclusively now.