Comment 53 for bug 192720

Brian, you might not have to remove the wifi card to install the OS, you should hopefully be able to install from the 'Alternate Install CD' which uses a text-based installer instead of actually booting up a full ubuntu (which hangs as it reaches that driver). This is what I did, and it installed ubuntu fine.

Just be aware that even when you have it installed and try to boot then, it might hang again as it tries to load that driver. (again, this is what I experienced).

The way to make your system boot is by blacklisting the guilty driver as described previously in this thread by pjina3, by using either the ubuntu cd in repair mode (not ridiculously difficult but might be a bit hard if you're new at this stuff) or by using a knoppix cd as mentioned, to edit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist as described. I was actually able to boot an ubuntu 7.10 livecd on the same laptop to edit the blacklist file, you might want to give that a shot.

Once you have that driver blacklisted (I eventually blacklisted both the bcm43xx and b43legacy drivers) and reboot without the cd inserted you should hopefully have a working install (apart from wireless); then if you have a wired ethernet port you can download updates using that.

As the guys say, a fix to the wifi driver problem has been submitted so hopefully when that gets pushed down via updates you should be able to get it over your wired connection. Failing that if you need the wifi card working in a hurry you can try the fixes suggested above by David Fokkema or Larry Finger.

Best of luck.