X not loading properly

After I select ubuntu from the GRUB menu, it will display the splash screen and show that ubuntu is loading, and when the loading is done, instead of being greeted by the login screen, I get some random colors and the word ubuntu repeated all the way across the top of the screen. I see the junk at the top of the screen right after the ubuntu loading screen with the red gradient.

When it is displaying the junk at the top of the screen, the rest of the screen is blank and the keyboard and mouse don't work. The screen will flicker a few times, and then not respond to anything except holding the power button down several seconds. This obviously renders ubuntu unusable.

If I boot into recovery mode and drop to root shell prompt, I can use the shell, but if I try to load X it will fail as explained above. So I DO have a root bash shell I can access.

I have tried to boot into recovery mode and use xfix, but the same thing happens. How can I fix this problem? I am using Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty.