Need help trouble-shooting boot mess.

[David Armour]

Hello,

Jaunty boots, but....

...the boot up screen where you use the arrow keys to select 
'recovery' mode doesn't produce any response to key pressing! Booting
progresses normally otherwise, and once I've logged in
everything looks and acts much as it has for a number of years now...[1]

I'm concerned that something has majorly borked my computer boot se-
quence, but that since the operating system's robustness successfully masks
the underlying borkiness, I've been shielded from any meaningful incon-
veniences. In the spirit of 'what have I got to lose', I've considered upgra-
ding from Jaunty to Karmic, despite some of the usual scary stories, but 
I worry that doing that over top of the borkiness will just cause it to per-
sist.

I've been meaning to ask about this here for a while now, because I can't
seem to learn much from Google. As always, any ideas welcome. TIA.

Sunday, November15 '09  3:59pm: 

[1] A few notable exceptions: 
	bluetooth file transfers stopped working back in Intrepid in Oct; 
	CUPS no longer 'sees' the HP LaserJet it's been communicating 
		with successfully for several years ... and which was the 
		original reason I switched from BSD to Ubuntu; 
	terminal displays .bashrc lines that reference "unexpected EOF"
	workspace switcher's names don't persist across re-boots;