Comment 37 for bug 57355

I realize this is weird, and I'm not sure why this works, but it does, at least for me on my HP Pavillion dv6000z laptop. I'm posting this in hopes that it helps others...doing exactly this, in this order, has worked for me.
1) Stop gdm from starting on boot:
update-rc.d -f gdm remove
2) Make your kernel line in /boot/grub/menu.lst look like this "kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.19 root=/dev/sda2 irqpoll pci=routeirq ro"
3) Once your computer boots, login (remember, gdm isnt going to load)
4) sudo rmmod bcm43xx ehci_hcd ohci_hcd sdhci mmc_core ieee80211softmac ieee80211 ieee80211_crypt
5) modprobe nvidia
6) modprobe ndiswrapper
7) use iwconfig and ifconfig to get your network up
8) Start up gdm "/etc/init.d/gdm start"
9) Have some fun. Yes, this leaves you without USB support, so that might not work for some people.