Some reason that the newest version has some issues with CRT monitors. You'll
have to select a higher resolution to stop the on going loop.

I've been to the display window in the preferences but
only one resolution is listed and it's that 600x480. I would have waited for the
lts next month but I have a program that only runs on 9.10.

The display at 640 x 480 suggests that it is using a vga plain vanilla
driver. You can try looking for a better one in System, Administration,
Hardware Drivers. You can find out about your drivers by typing lshw in a
terminal and scrolling back through with the mouse to the *-display section.
If you see UNCLAIMED then you have a driver problem. You can copy that
section and post it back to us if you want.

I checked it out and have pasted this section

ioport:376 ioport:ffa0(size=16) memory:50000000-500003ff
*-serial UNCLAIMED
description: SMBus
product: 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) SMBus Controller
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 1f.3
bus info: pci@0000:00:1f.3
version: 01
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
configuration: latency=0
resources: ioport:e000(size=32)
This was the only area that has the unclaimed feed back. So this would be a
driver issue.

No. This is a serial port. What you want to clip is the *-display section.
Also, did you try Hardware Drivers?

I posted the area using lshw that shows unclaimed in the last reply. Here is
the area that shows the *display. Little tired last night and did the other
part.
*-display
description: VGA compatible controller
product: 82845G/GL[Brookdale-G]/GE Chipset Integrated Graphics
Device
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 2
bus info: pci@0000:00:02.0
version: 01
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: bus_master cap_list rom
configuration: driver=i915 latency=0
resources: irq:16 memory:f0000000-f7ffffff(prefetchable)
memory:ffa80000-ffafffff
So this is the display area.

Intel is generally well supported, although they are often not as timely in
releasing them as other vendors. I do not have 9.10 installed at the moment
on my Intel based netook. But I got full resolution when I had it installed
a few days ago. I just updated to 10.04 Lucid Lynx where it works fine with
full res and compositing.

There are 3 ways to go (in order of ease): have Ubuntu search for drivers
(System, Administration, Hardware Drivers), use Synaptic to search manually
or go to Intel's site for drivers. A fourth way would be to try for a kernel
upgrade. Since 9.04 the kernel has taken over graphics setting.

The 3rd option is probably the least desirable because you will have to
compile it for your kernel version. That is somewhat daunting for a new
user.

I would start with Hardware Drivers. If it says that there is no driver
available and this is likely the case since there are no proprietary Intel
drivers that I know of. Then move to Synaptic and search for your chipset.
You can search for xserver-xorg and look for video-intel. If it has a green
box then it is already installed and you should be able to change your
resolution to a higher setting unless there is something wrong that prevents
it from being activated. I use KDE so can't tell you how to do that in
GNOME.

I tried all of your sugestions, but made no progress. It could be a bios issue,
but have no real way to flash the bios since this computer is not dual booted so
I can run the bios using DOS. And the bios maker (intel) does not to my
knowledge have a Linux version to flash the bios. This is a 2002 machine and
there is a 2008 bios for it. This may not be the answer so I will have to wait
for for 10.4 to be released to see if this problem will be addressed.

I doubt that it is a bios issue. I would suggest that you try a different
distro first. They are free to download and burn from ISO and you can try as
many as you like.

Good distros to try might be Mint, Mandriva and openSuSE. All are well
supported and complete. I have had good luck with Mandriva working on tricky
graphics cards. Each distribution is unique and you cannot assume that
because they share the same kernel that you will get the same results as all
are on different development paths and specialize in different things.

I'll try another disto and see what happens.