Comment 3 for bug 482735

I'm having a similar issue, but at boot-time. I'm trying to guide my mom through booting off an Ubuntu 9.10 LiveCD to repair a Windows installation on her Gateway laptop (I don't have the specs, sorry), but she's getting the "fixing recursive fault but reboot is needed" error message right after she selects either the "Try Ubuntu without making any changes" or the "OEM Install" options. The install CD was shipped from Canonical, so I'd hope there aren't any disk errors.

I'll try to get the stop screen word-for-word next time I work with the computer, but for now, what generally causes this kind of error message? Is it a hardware issue, or did I get a defective disk after all? I told my mom to run the "Check disk for errors" option, but I think she got a similar screen...