New Installation - Blank Screen On Boot

I am completely new to Ubuntu, but wanted to try it.

Installed 14.04 from a CD onto a usb 8gb stick so I could dual boot either Win XP or Ubuntu.

During installation I noticed a couple of things, but don't know if of any significance:
1) Said "No swap partition", but I continued on
2) Near the end, I noticed messages "completely removing Ubiquity ...." and "completely removing apt-clone..."
There may have been other messages, but I did not stay & watch -- needed to do something else.

Now when I try to boot, I get the Grub menu just fine. XP will still boot fine, BUT:
1) Ubuntu does not boot - goes to blank screen - nothing else!
2) Advanced Ubuntu Recovery will boot, but screen is small & has vertical lines in background. If I select
Displays, it says 'Built-in display".

I followed the 'sticky' here & went thru many of the steps editing linux /boot/.... in all the various ways
mentioned. Last attempt was with .... video=VGA:1024x768-16@60 However, nothing has helped.
GRUB> vbeinfo shows various entries including 1024x768 both 16 & 32 bit.

The hardware is a Dell Inspirion 1100 which has an Intel 82845G graphics controller. When ruing XP
the screen resolution is 1024x768x32. Usb stick shows 3.4Gb used & 4.4Gb free.

At this point, I have tried everything I can find to do. Any help will be much appreciated.
TIA, joe