I installed Ubuntu 13.04. I first tried installing via CD but the install would freeze on the second step every time. I made a USB and the install ran perfectly. I restarted the machine and everything loaded fine. I get to the login screen and login to my account. This appears to be functioning normally as well. However, as soon as I click on something, the screen goes wild with thousands of colored boxes that change and move with mouse movement and clicks.

As this now appears to be an incompatibility with my graphics card, here is more information on that. I have a Dell Inspiron 530 and a look up of that gives the graphics card as being an nVidia GeForce8300 GS according to Dell Product Support Page.

I am unable to access any sort of settings pages on the computer itself as the display problems make it entirely impossible. Would it be possible to remotely log into the computer and change preferences somehow?