I am running Ubuntu 10.04 LTS. When I boot up the computer it goes to the splash but there is no login screen, just the purple background and the mouse cursor. "Checking battery state" is the last line that does not have an "[OK]". When I press Ctr-alt-shift-F1 I can login and sudo stop gdm and startx. However this makes it so that the applets don't show.
Error: "The panel encountered a problem while loading "OAFIID:GNOME_notificationAreaApplet" and does it for every single applet. Everything else works fine though.
I get a EHCI: BIOS handoff failed twice in the dmesg as well.
The laptop has intel mobile integrated graphics.
UPDATE: Now my desktop has the exact same problem.
Things that I have tried:
Changing to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="i915.modeset=1 acpi=off"
Best Answer
To anyone that have this issue: How much free space do you have on your Hard drive? Too little space can cause Gnome power management to stop. Try to free some space using a live cd (let´s say 5 gb) and reboot your machine. Now it should start normally.