It should be noted that this only temporary editing grub. If it works, he
needs to use gedit to change grub2 so that the change can be saved and made
permanent.

Yes, and thank you. Looks like Bernie (and I) will be editing the file
/etc/default/grub, and replacing the line

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"

with

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash nomodeset"

and then, running

sudo update-grub

to complete the job. I haven't tried that yet, myself, as I want to first
ensure that my 8.04 installation in another partition isn't adversely affected
by the "nomodeset".

I'll also add that "lshw" now reports the display as "UNCLAIMED", suggesting
that I'm using a generic driver. I can't set Visual Effects, and I'm probably
not going to see any acceleration from the Intel Integrated Graphics.

But that's a small price to pay to get a usable range of resolutions. I
couldn't do anything at all with 8.10 or 9.04 on this machine, and wouldn't have
attempted a 9.10 installation if I couldn't keep 8.04 in another partition.

I hope the Intel driver is better in 10.04, of course. But it looks like this
level of functionality is something I can live with.

It may be slow, but it is encouraging.

Your nomodeset parameter should only affect the entries where you put it.
You will have to add it to each boot entry where you want to use it. If you
don't add it to the 8.10 boot lines then it won't affect 8.10.

As for your graphics driver, I would bet that a newer kernel would improve
things as 9.10 uses an older kernel than 10.04 which I am using. Kernel
upgrades are few once a distribution becomes established. You can get more
upgrades by adding backports to your repositories. see:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuBackports

Did you try to install a driver using Hardware Drivers or Synaptic? Check to
see if xserver-xorg-video-intel is installed. If not, install it.

I am sorry that you have had to go through this. It is not the norm to
experience major problems, but some hardware is problematic for various
reasons. I have long ago deleted the bottom of your message with your model,
but believe it was a Dell. Did you look at this link:
en.community.dell.com/.../consumer-linux.aspx