HP dv4000 Centrino Live Disk X problems

[Jack Jackson]

Hi, All
using the live cd as printed and distributed from Canonical on this out 
of the box new HP dv4000 (Centrino) on which windows works:

Startup normal, no error messages.
X begins to run the screen goes blank.
Music plays
All other vt windows (1-6 & 8-9) work fine.

ps aux grep X shows:

root 25665 0.2 2.7 18668 14032 ? S 22:00 0:01 /usr/X11R6/bin/X :0 -br 
-audit 0 -auth /var/lib/gdm/ :0.Xauth -nolisten tcp vt7

All I can see of interest in /var/log/messages:
localhost kernel: apm: BIOS not found

but then

port probes work and
gconfd (ubuntu-26885): starting (version 2.10.0) pid 26885 user 'ubuntu'

/var/log/dmesg shows nothing immediately helpful *to me*

What else can I try?