Comment 27 for bug 430494

An addition to my post above.
After I hit ctrl+alt+F7 (tty7) and gdm + x started, a system crash report appeared, informing of a serious kernel issue and suggesting a restart.
Today I reinstalled all the latest kernel packages (2.6.31-10).
Now the systems works as it should. Karmic opens: grub - xsplash-gdm-xsplash-x.