Problem booting after failed VMWare Server install

While I was installing VMware 2.0 on my AAO, I got an error that went by too quick for me to see. When I rebooted the box, it demanded that I do a manual fsck on the hard disk because of the previous error.

I have the AAO with the 160 GB hard drive that came with WinXP home edition on it. I blew that out and installed Ubuntu 8.04 from a usb stick (updated to 8.10). I have not had one problem with this netbook since I got windows off of it. The last thing I did was attempt to install VMware on it. I followed the install instructions from Howto Forge to do the install (which worked flawlessly on another laptop)... and I got an error just before I was prompted to enter the license number.

Now, every time I boot up the AAO, I get the following error:

* Enabling additional executable binary formats binfmt-support
FATAL: Could not load /lib/modules/2.6.27-9-generic/modules.dep no such file or directory
update-binfmts: warning: couldn't load the binfmt_misc module. [ OK ]
* Checking battery state... [ OK ]

Then the computer hangs and nothing happens. I can go from TTY2 to TTY6 and log in, but I don't even know where to start. The AAO can be booted into Ubuntu 8.04 from the usb stick that I used to install it. I navigated to the /lib/modules and there is no modules.deb file in that folder... Is this error just saying that I am missing that file? And if so, can I copy it from another Ubuntu machine?

Any one that can help, I would appreciate it... I have no desire to keep this AAO as an expensive paperweight!

Thanks,

~John