My computer was giving the very same symptoms as in the original post; couldn't start the Live CD because it would completely freeze with a black screen after the boot-splash part, just before starting X (it locked up such that even pressing Caps Lock wouldn't toggle the keyboard light!)
This is an AthlonXP 2500+, Abit NF7-S, AGP Radeon 9600xt, 512ram. Ubuntu 6.10. It's using the "ati" driver. In other linux distros I discovered I could get in to X by disabling dri in xorg.conf. (or switching to the vesa driver, which was unacceptably slow, etc..) However, today I've finally found another workaround which allowed me to start the livecd: I changed the AGP speed in my BIOS from 8x to 4x. (Other BIOS settings like fast writes have no effect for me) So for the first time, Ubuntu is running with dri on and the 'ati' driver on my system =). While it's still only a workaround, perhaps it will help narrow down a problem in the radeon driver when dri is combined with AGP 8x? Anyway, I encourage people who still can't start the livecd to try this; as I didn't see it mentioned before. -- [edgy][regression][rv280] black screen and console freeze when X starts - drm lockup https://launchpad.net/bugs/67487 -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
