I agree with Slogger that this might be related with bug #22985. At least some of the problems mentioned here look similar, but there are some new issues, too.
Bug #22985 comes from Dapper (6.06), still exists in Edgy (6.10). In Dapper, switching to a console worked fine and a fix was easy to apply. In Edgy there seem to be problems with the console, too, which should be a different problem but very much worsens the situation. I have an Acer Aspire 1692WLMi laptop (Pentium M, ATI X700 PCI-E, 1280x800 LCD) and had bug #22985 with Dapper: when X ran, LCD turned black, it seemed like the backlight was turned off. Possibly there was signal on the CRT output, but I can't recall that now. I have only tried Edgy-live once and this is what I recall: LCD turned black on X startup, just like on Dapper. Tried switching to console but it looked all garbled up... very unpleasant, but it looked like the system was running. I was eventually able to boot and switch to a sane console by specifying vga=771 boot parameter. I'll try and repeat this later. I'll confirm it here. -- Install 6:10 Failure: Black screen at Live Desktop Stage https://launchpad.net/bugs/67487 -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs