Comment 184 for bug 25931

I had the similar problem. The problem appeared after I had upgraded from Ubuntu 7.10 to Ubuntu 8.04 (64bit, Intel Core-Duo) via the update manager. The system worked more or less fine for a couple of weeks. One of the glitches was that it took a 10-20 seconds after login to recognize the network connection.

The problem became serious after I ha inserted a data DVD in the DVD drive. The DVD drive on my machine (Dell Optiplex 745) never worked correctly under Ubuntu 7.10. I had to change the BIOS setting at every fresh bootup of Ubuntu to be able to open it and insert a CD/DVD. This is probably an issue of Dell, not of Ubuntu. However, after having inserted the data DVD, it first displayed the contents. At a 2nd trial, it refused to display anything. Only the DVD was spinning for a few seconds. That was the point of time after which I could not boot without the message 'Failed to initialize HAL'. The problems spread over the days to other functions such as access to USB memory sticks. Later, I was no longer able to shutdown (system froze after pressing the power-off icon on the upper right corner of the Gnome display). Fiinally, I was no able to start Gnome (gdm). Only the recovery mode saved me from loosing the PC.

The problem vanished after executing

   sudo mv /etc/rc.d/13gdm /etc/rc.d/30gdm

as advised above.