gnome freezing unreliably

[Samuel Thurston, III]

I've been using Ubuntu on a custom built system for a few months now
without much problem.  I'm still not happy with how JACK works,
particularly since it doesn't detect my midi devices, but that's not
the problem I'm dealing with today.

My mom's HP pavillion desktop was wiped out by a virus, so i thought
this would be an ideal opportunity to get her to move to linux through
Ubuntu.  I have a warty disc so I installed from there, and then used
the onboard nic to upgrade to hoary, because i needed the more
advanced kernel with ndiswrapper included in order to get her D-Link
G510 working.  Problem is, since upgrading, the gnome desktop
completely freezes everything either on login, or when trying to
access the cdrom.  usually it's at login, however if i go in and clean
up the home directory, it seems to alleviate the problem, until I
access the CD.  the mouse stops responding, the keyboard stops
responding, and i can't kill the x server or anything.  then I have to
reboot and try the whole thing over again.  at any rate, I'm not
getting anywhere, so i thought I'd see if anybody here has any
suggestions.

Thanks,
Sam