Comment 12 for bug 145208

There is a somewhat easy fix for this, enter in a terminal "sudo killall compiz", then enter your password. I have a keyboard shortcut for open terminal, so I just press it and kill compiz and the screen is then back. Compiz will automatically reload itself so everything is back to normal after that command. This is a workaround of course, the fix would be for compiz codebase.

Using hardy, nvidia 8800 GTX, compiz, and binary drivers.