Serious boot problem and no splash screen on new laptop

[Carsten Agger]

I just installed Gutsy on a new MSI S271 laptop with and AMD Sempron
3400+ processor.

Afted the Grub screen, the screen goes dark/blank and nothing happens.
Getting impatient, I press CTRL+Alt+F1 to leave the graphic mode and see
whatever output there may be - i says something about "kinitd", and now
the text-based boot process seems to begin, detecting and setting up all
hardware etc.

And from this point, the machine boots normally into Gnome, and
everything works fine (everything except hibernation which is due to a
known bug in the fgrlx ATI driver which I need to play Urban Terror).

So, everything works fine except I get no splash screen and the boot
process doesn't start till I press CTRL+Alt+F1.


What can this be - any ideas? A missing boot option in grub? I tried
switching to the "ati" graphics driver but it didn't help (and didn't
allow me - my son, actually - to play Urban Terror ).

Note i've installed from the "normal" (32 bit) live CD even though I
believe the Sempron is actually 64 bit - this shouldn't be a problem
though, or what?

As it is, this problem lies somewhere between "OK" and "deeply
unacceptable" - I mean, yes I can live with having to hit CTRL+Alt+F1
when booting, but how would a poor newbie know how to even try that?

Thanks in advance for any help.
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