General :: Ubuntu 10.10 Booting Into Console

Firstly I'm a complete newbie to Linux so be gentle ! Lots of unfamilar terms being used in these forums - reminds me of my windows experience 20 years ago !!
A friend gave me a copy of Ubuntu 10.10 so I've tried loading it onto an old Compaq Nx9005 Laptop yesterday. The installation seemed to progress OK, I completed all the information prompted for and then tried a reboot- but here's the problem:

It boots into the console but before the login request there are 2 lines:-

19.840039 AC'97 1access is not valid [0xffffffff], removing mixer.
19.840228 ali mixer 1 creating error.

Anyway after trying to login with user name and password it just awaits me to input a command.

Now reading through other posts I tried a Sudo startX command, this produced a large number of additional lines:

Picking out what I think might be helpful in resolving the problem:

X.Org X Server 1.9.0
Build Operating system : Linux 2.6.24-27-server i686 Ubuntu

(EE) Vesa: Kernal modesetting driver in use, refusing to load
(EE) No devices detected

Fatal server error:
No screens found

On the face of it it looks like it could possible be something to do with video drivers and/or sound drivers but just my own very limited assessment. I'm hoping that someone on this forum can come up with a reason and more importantly a solution.!

On another similar problem thread someone suggested that they might be at Run level 2 or 3 instead of run level 5 (Whatever that means!!!!).. well after entering the command run -r it tells me that I'm at level 2 but I can't change that to run level 5 by entering sudo telinit 5 - it just resorts to a command prompt