The blinking cursor is bug #850202 in grub, which has been fixed for the upcoming oneiric release.
Not seeing the splash screen is always a possibility because the video driver may not come on-line in the kernel until gdm is ready to display. However, since you also say boot is slowing down, that may not be the issue here. Please run 'apport-collect 782114' to gather the information about your system that we would need for further analysis. ** Changed in: plymouth (Ubuntu) Status: New => Incomplete -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/782114 Title: no boot splash To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/plymouth/+bug/782114/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs