Why do I have to hold down a key to boot?

[sd401k]

Here's a weird problem. Upon powering up, I will see nothing but a black screen after selecting 2.6.28-11-generic on the grub menu until I touch a key, any key. Then the hard drive will spin up and I go to the splash screen and things proceed normally. From there, no problems until I go to shut down, once again nothing but black until I touch a key where it then goes to the splash screen and continues to shut down normally. If I let go of the key during either of the start up or shut down splash screens the bar will stop moving and it just sits there until I hit the key again. Weird ain't it? Can anybody point me in the right direction? I don't even know where to start. Thanks for reading.
O.k., it's fixed now. Did the updates this morning and all is now well.

[KhaaL]

a friend of mine also has this issue, i'm curious to what causes it

[SoCalChris]

Do you happen to have an HP laptop? I had a similar bug in 8.10 (That's still there), but is fixed for me in 9.04. Others are reporting that it is still broken though.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/272247

[sd401k]

It's a Compaq F767NR laptop with an AMD 64 and Nvidia chipset. Yeah, Intrepid had the problem for me too. Jaunty worked great with the Alpha 6 iso but after the last set of upgrades I reverted back to the screwed up boot.