Intermittent hangs during boot after upgrade - 'still angry after 101 spins"

[hans12345]

I have Intermittent hangs during boot after upgrade to 13.04.

Sometimes a black screen, sometimes the first Ubuntu screen incomplete, but most notably sometimes this message
- 'still angry after 101 spins, halt"

It is now running, so I can look at log files if someone can point me in the right direction.

I had problems with Ubuntu 12.04 earlier, and thought Xubuntu might be a better choice. See my earlier problem, which could be relevant: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2148929

Hardware:
Home built PC, no HW changes for a long time.
AMD X2 processor
ATI HD 5450 1 GB graphics card

Help!

Where do I go from here? Where do I look?

I would appreciate some advice.

[hans12345]

I re-installed, seemed clean enough, did a reboot and again:
"still angry after 101 spins"
Rebooted again, and it worked.

Has anyone an idea on where to look?

[hans12345]

I still have boot problems. Normally after 3 or 4 boots it starts up OK.

Another common boot error message (other than the one above) contains the phrase:

... DMA_Pusher-ch 0 get ...

Where should I be looking in my logs? What do I look for?

[hans12345]

I'm beginning to believe it is the 'nouveau' driver.

Is this my problem?

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video-nouveau/+bug/1098316

[hans12345]

Fixed by setting NOMODESET.

Thanks to post :

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1613132

[LewRockwell]

Thank you for your thread, posts, and reference links!