Comment 2 for bug 945257

I'm experiencing the same issue.

Acer laptop; acquired as a 'spares or repair' and I've no idea what the spec is.
I will try and get a system report via 11.10, 12.04 doesn't boot on this system at all.

I can't boot the system into 12.04 at all, so I'll see what I can do about attaching a hardware spec using 11.10

I'm booting the system via PXE/tftp and NFS. System boots fine into the i386 11.10 live disk this way; I get the GUI etc.
Other systems boot ok off this image.

System didn't boot into any of the 12.04 alphas I tried, or the beta1 disk.

I get the same problem in single and multi user.

Single user (S appended to kernel boot args)

* starting configure network device security
* starting mount network filesystems
* starting failsafe boot delay
* starting network connection manager
* stopping mount network filesystems
* starting bridge socket events into upstart
* starting bluetooth daemon
* starting configure network device
* starting configure network device security
* starting mount network filesystems
* stopping mount network filesystems
* stopping failsafe boot delay
* starting system V initialisation compatibility
* starting set sysctls from /etc/sysctl.conf
* stopping set sysctls from /etc/sysctl.conf
* starting configure network device
* starting configure network device security
* starting configure network device
[ xx.xxxx] b43-phy0 ERROR: firmware file "b43/ucode5.fw" not found
[ xx.xxxx] b43-phy0 ERROR: firmware file "b43-open/ucode5.fw" not found
[ xx.xxxx] b43-phy0 ERROR: You must go to http://wireless.kernel.org [snip] read all the instructions on this website.

throughout the boot process, i was toggling the numlock key
this responded right up to this point; it is now non-responsive.
this suggests to me that it isn't something stalling the process; waiting for a timeout etc, but the kernel is no longer listening.