Comment 3 for bug 440657

This machine is no longer exhibiting this behavior because i turned off hardware acceleration for X11 with the following /etc/X11/xorg.conf:

Section "Device"
        Identifier "Configured Video Device"
        Driver "intel"
        Option "NoAccel" "true"
EndSection

(i arrived at this thanks to https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/jaunty/+source/xserver-xorg-video-intel/+bug/304871/comments/42 )

as a result, graphics are a bit cruftier on the machine, but it continues to work at least.

I can't afford to upgrade this machine directly to lucid at the moment. when i do, i'll remove the xorg.conf and see if i can coax the problem to recur.