Dell inspiron 8000, Ubuntu 6.10 problems

[Bram Neijt]

First boot went perfectly, except for a garbled (split in the middle
and distorted at some places) screen. Got to the GNOME desktop and was
able to select the install icon and run it.

Then I upgraded the bios to A13 from Windows XP.
A new boot gives a perfect screen, but after the Ubuntu logo
disappears, the following text lines start pooring in with about 1,5
second intervals:

[17179712.624000] Buffer I/O error on device hdb, logical block 7
same for blocks 0,1,0,1,2,3,4,5,6 etc.

This continues quite some time and doesn't seem to result in any progress.

Reading some of the fora, I then decided to reburn the CD at single
speed. This helped and I now get the same old broken screen again.
Even using the vga=771 option produces the same gabled screen
(although the screen before GNOME is differently aligned)
So, then I burned the alternate iso (at single speed) and tried that.
Installation went well. However I then get the same problems at the
login screen.

First I thought, well I'll just open another terminal using
CRTL-ALT-F1, but after trying all the function keys and alt in
combination with the arrow keys, I couldn't get anything but a black
screen.

So, my question is: what now? Any good links and tips?

Greetings,
  Bram

PS If somewone could open up an Inspiron 8000 page in the wiki, I
would be willing to send in some specs etc..