Installation problem

[John French]

I have been enjoying learning about ubuntu, and familiarizing myself
with it on my old PC. Now we have re-allocated the hardware in the
family, and I have shiny new system. So I set about installing Hoary.

All went apparently well, all the usual packages were installed (as far
as I could tell), until the point at which I expected ubuntu to start.
At that point my monitor showed a message, "Input signal out of range",
and nothing further happened. This gave me no opportunity to correct
anything.

I have succeeded in using the recovery mode, once I unplugged all the
USB devices, but have been unable to work out how to configure the
monitor from the command line. Anything relating to Gnome produces a 
message, "unable to open display". The monitor is a standard IBM 15" LCD.

Any helpful advice, please ?

John French