Comment 1 for bug 32389

A bit more info: I've discovered that if I disable graphics hardware acceleration, this problem no longer occurs. I modified my xorg.conf by replacing "nvidia" with "vesa", and installed usplash. My system then worked fine (albeit with software-rendered flickery low-res display :-) and I was able to switch back and forth between virtual consoles.

In summary, my system works fine if I either have
* usplash installed
or
* nvidia drivers enabled
but not both.
So I'm no longer sure if this bug is filed in the right place :-)

Versions are:
xserver-xorg 7.0.0-0ubuntu17
nvidia-kernel-common 20051028+1
nvidia-glx 1.0.8178+2.6.15.6-1
usplash 0.1-31
sysvinit (and sysv-rc) 2.86.ds1-6ubuntu17
kernel is now upgraded slightly: 2.6.15-16-amd64-k8

Not sure what other experiments are worth trying. I tried using a lower screen resolution and refresh-rate, didn't make any difference. I had a look at my 'dmesg' output but there didn't seem to be anything relevant to this. I can only guess it must be a weird hardware combination that I have - I haven't noticed any other discussion about this on the forums.