"failed to initialize HAL!"

[john levin]

I have two laptops, one quite old, both running Ubuntu Dapper Flight  
4, fully updated via synaptic.

On the old laptop (it's circa 1998), after logging in I'm getting the  
error
"Internal error
failed to initialize HAL!"

But this isn't happening on the newer laptop, which makes me think  
that it is related to the hardware.

Nothing similar in Launchpad (although I can confirm
https://launchpad.net/products/hal/+bug/29823
on both laptops.)

Anyone else seen this? How can I go about debugging this? What info  
would be useful for a bug report?

TIA

John