I succeeded in booting by adding irqpoll to the boot options of the 2.6.20-9 kernel. (as suggested in above)
-- kernel 2.6.20-5 doesn't boot with sata-hd https://launchpad.net/bugs/78288 -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
