Comment 3 for bug 539794

Hi there,
  I always have to use the noapic option. I've had to do this since moving 7.10 to 8.04. I've continued to use noapic through 8.10, 9.04 and 9.10. Occasionally I've tested without noapic. Without the noapic option, the laptop does not boot. It appears to freeze before getting to the GDM.

On lucid, no joy trying to boot without noapic - the grub, disappears, fsck messages appear , black screen with flashing cursor, before cursor disappears and computer freezes.

With noapic boot and use of the computer is fine - i.e. grub disappears, fsck messages appear, black screen with flashing cursor, more black screen, then GDM displays. Its just the wireless that doesn't work.