(Hardy) laptop shuts down when the laptop lid is shut

[some_person]

Whenever I close the lid of my laptop (Acer Aspire 6920, if it's relevant), it displays a black screen (with text regarding a video error), then shuts down. When I turn my laptop on again (and boot into Ubuntu), it displays stuff from my previous session, then shuts down yet again. What's going on here, and how can I fix this?

[Martin Kossick (hacktick)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this issue and helping to make Ubuntu better. Examining the information you have given us, this does not appear to be a bug report so we are closing it and converting it to a question in the support tracker. We appreciate the difficulties you are facing, but it would make more sense to raise problems you are having in the support tracker at https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu if you are uncertain if they are bugs. For help on reporting bugs, see https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs.