No Splash Screen Ubuntu 8.04 on Dell Dimension 2400

Intro
I have a friend whose Windows finally died on their Dell Dimension 2400. After they spent some money trying to resolve the issue with anti-virus and other Security software they finally gave up. The Dimension 2400 is actually a nice PC (512MB, 40GB, 2.8G P4). We decided to put Ubuntu on it and give it some life.

Saving Data
We booted the thing with Ubuntu Live CD. It had an issue with automated mounting of the Windows NTFS partition. However, Ubuntu gave a suggestion hot to mount the disk from a command line and force mount in order to ignore errors on the disk.
After the mount, we were able to copy their "My Documents" folder onto the flash disk and save their photos.
After saving their data, we ran the Ubuntu install. I pretty much followed the steps I typically do (check the blogy entry from April). I skipped installing some programs not needed for their kid (Netbeans and some development and system tools).

Splash Screen Issue
The only issue we had is that there was no splash screen during the boot into Ubuntu. One great thing about the Ubuntu is that if you have an issue there is a big chance someone else had it before you. I found a solution that worked on different PCs and seems it worked for this one:

• Edit /etc/initramfs-tools/modules file and add these two modules:
  fbcon
  vesafb

• After that, edit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-framebuffer file and comment the following lines with #:
  blacklist vesafb

• update the kernel image with the following command:
  sudo update-initramfs -u

• then install startup manager with the command:
  sudo apt-get install startupmanager

• now you can run Startup Manager from System:Administration menu and specigy options and screen size (I used 1024x768 here)

I have a similar PC that my daughter uses that has the same issue. Will try it there as well.