OK, to continue my saga...this seems to have been caused by the (broken) transition made from grub to grub2 with the coming of 9.10. I followed the directions at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Grub2 and was able to fix things...and (so far) no crashes. But knock on wood.
-- Touchpad and mouse buttons not working after upgrade from Ubuntu 9.04 to 9.10 https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/442441 You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs