The same problem occurs on a machine with Intel G965 integrated graphics. The crudely patched usplash-theme-ubuntu.c posted by cdenley at http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=304673&page=2 fixes it for me.
I can't believe the priority for this has been set at "low". First impressions count, and this makes ubuntu look like a dog's breakfast. It's very disconcerting to experience this sort of thing when doing an install. -- usplash appears black and white (grayscale) on amd64 https://launchpad.net/bugs/67545 -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
