Hello, I just installed Ubuntu 10.10 (I'm brand new to Ubuntu) on my laptop. I seem to have a video bug that I don't know how to deal with.

When the log-in screen comes up, the boxes are way off in the corner of the screen (partially off it). When I enter my password, the screen goes black for a few seconds, then returns to the login screen.

I can open a Terminal window and enter my login info that way. When I go back to Gnome (Ctrl+Alt+F7 or whatever) it shows me as "logged in" but I still can't get to the desktop.

If anyone has any advice, I'd love to hear it--just try to use simple language, please, since I really don't know Linux at all yet!

I'm running an Averatec 3700 Series: Mobile AMD Sempron 3000+ 512 MB DDR, 80 GB HDD

After looking at this question I tried going in through Failsafe mode (took me a while to figure out the hold-shift-while-booting thing >_<) and playing around with the resolution. Setting a somewhat wider resolution did seem to fix things so that I can log into regular GNOME, I think. I'm not sure if this fix will persist, but it seems like it might!