Help with hotplug process

[Hendrick, Paul]

Hi everyone,
I've been trying for some time to get Ubuntu to run on my laptop, but having no luck at all, though Fedora core 3 runs fine on it.(i prefer ubuntu though, so i'd like to sort this out)

the problem is when booting up, everything stops at the hotplug service and i get this output.
modprobe FATAL: Error installing hw_random (lib/modules/2.6.8.1-3-386/kernel/drivers/char/hw_random)
input/output error
adding hw_random to the blacklist stops the output, but then i still cant get past the hotplug service.(unless i alt+sysrq+e)

dmesg and system logs arent showing any kernel oops' messages, and I cant see any reason why I still cant get past hotplug.

the laptop is the second to last one on this page, and all the system specs are available there.
http://www.acernotebooks.co.uk/asp/product.asp?recorprod=1&product=200&cat=79&ph=&keywords=&recor=&SearchFor=&PT_ID=


any help with this would be great...i'm going nuts! 


cheers,
paul.