9.10 install locks up on Acer Aspire One

[spearfish]

I am having trouble figuring out how to enable the keyboard & mouse in my Ubunto 9.10 install.

First, I downloaded the 9.10 .iso file. Then I made a bootable USB flash drive with the Ubuntu 9.10 disk image on it. Now I am having problems with the system locking up during install. No mouse and no keyboard at the graphics-based "Welcome" screen.

The USB flash image works fine: The system boots off the USB and it allows me to initially select install flags, (like noapic, nolapic, acpi=off) and the system goes into it's graphics-based install mode.

Then it shows a text screen with "SQUASHFS errors" having to do with page faults and it goes to the graphics-based "Welcome Screen" where it asks the user to select a language. At this point, the keyboard and mouse-pad have locked up, and I am not able to select anything or continue.

I have tried several boot options including:
irqpoll
noapic
nolapic
acpi=off

safe graphics mode makes the screen look all garbled and scrambled! haha

I'm guessing there is some command line option that I'm missing. Anybody else have problems installing Ubuntu on an Acer Aspire One?

thanks