Right, I can recreate this in VMWare, and the problem goes away without usplash. I'd like you to be able to confirm this too.
The machine doesn't actually lock up. I'm changing VT by SSH'ing in to the guest and issuing "chvt 1". Once I've done this, I see a garbled screen in the guest (which appears frozen), but I can switch back to X by doing "chvt 7" from the SSH session.
Right, I can recreate this in VMWare, and the problem goes away without usplash. I'd like you to be able to confirm this too.
The machine doesn't actually lock up. I'm changing VT by SSH'ing in to the guest and issuing "chvt 1". Once I've done this, I see a garbled screen in the guest (which appears frozen), but I can switch back to X by doing "chvt 7" from the SSH session.