Laptop refuses to boot after upgrade to Hardy and hibernation

[pozorvlak]

Last night, I upgraded my laptop (a four-year old RM machine, don't know the model number) from Gutsy Gibbon to Hardy Heron using the online upgrade tool. Apparently (I wasn't there, and have the next part of the story second-hand), the installation completed, and the computer rebooted successfully. Then it was turned off and (later) on again, and it continued to work. Then it was hibernated. Now, whenever I turn it on, it gets to the "Loading GRUB" stage before the screen goes black and the computer goes dead. The LED still comes on to indicate that the "Fn" key is depressed, and the power button still turns it off, but all other keys have no effect. The hard drive light blinks on for a second just before the blackout, but then goes off and doesn't come back on again. The hard drive's relatively new: I replaced the old one within the last year. Pressing ESC at the GRUB prompt before the blackout does nothing. Boot CDs are noticed (a "reading boot CD" message appears), but it still dies.

What can I do?

[GZ Expat]

I had the same thing happen to my desktop, dual boot, Wubi set up. While downloading updates the dsl crashed and locked up the computer. After re-booting, Ubuntu wouldn't load at all, while Windows worked fine. I would get nothing but a black screen after choosing the Ubuntu option. After trying to reinstall with Wubi...same; black screen.