Missing virtual terminals

[Stephen Ward]

I have a problem with my home PC - running hoary.  When I hit 
ctrl-alt-f1 etc nothing happens.  I have built several ubuntu machines 
and have never seen this before.  It is very irritating as I use this on 
the odd occasion when X dies or gets too slow (my home PC is pretty 
old), but it doesn't work at anytime, even just before and just after login.

Any ideas would be appreciated.

Stephen