Dell Ubuntu boot files missing

[Harold]

My fairly new Dell Inspirion 530 is running Ubuntu 7.10 

The system seemed to be running correctly this afternoon.

When I booted it up last night a pop-up window said that Ubuntu is
running in low graphics mode

It ould not let me set it at better than 800x600.
I had been running about 1200 x something. 

When logged into sudo and listed my /boot directory to check on the
settings is empty.

I tried to look at the log files but there are so many I do not know
where to start.
The file user.log gives the same messages I have been getting for the
last month at least:

Feb 27 21:32:35 dell dhcdbd: message_handler: message handler not found
under /com/redhat/dhcp/eth0 for sub-path eth0.dbus.get.nis_servers

which I do not understand.

The machine did boot into Gnome desktop.

Any suggestions on where to start?

Do I need to reload Ubuntu completely or can I copy files in to restore
correct operation? 
Have I picked up a bug I need to be concerned about?

Harold