Cannot boot ubuntu from Hard disk or USB (Strangest problem yet)

[pouldney]

I have an Acer aspire 1551 notebook

Ubuntu worked fine until now.
It will not boot.

It boots until the music sounds, and the login screen
is supposed to appear, then it just locks up.

The strange part is that both the installed version and
the USB ubuntu live version fail at the same point.
I even tried two versions of Ubuntu live on USB.

Windows 7 however works fine.

I think something must have happened to the hardware
That will not load ubuntu,but will load windows

ANY IDEAS?

About the only thing I did different on my last session was
to install wine and then install Textpad in wine

[pouldney]

This problem gets stranger

I tried ubuntu 11.4 and 10.04.2 on live USB
they would not boot failing at the same spot

Today I tried ubuntu 9.10 Surprisingly it booted live.
The screen was not quite right(the toolbars at top and bottom
were missing) So I powered down and booted again.This time the
screen was ok.

I pulled out the USB stick and booted into the installed ubuntu 10.04
This time it worked.

I have no idea what Rel 9.10 did to fix it, as I did nothing but use the
file browser while in Rel 9.10

[rokytnji]

Today I tried ubuntu 9.10 Surprisingly it booted live.
The screen was not quite right(the toolbars at top and bottom
were missing) So I powered down and booted again.This time the
screen was ok.

I pulled out the USB stick and booted into the installed ubuntu 10.04
This time it worked.

I have no idea what Rel 9.10 did to fix it, as I did nothing but use the
file browser while in Rel 9.10

Running 9.10 as a live session should not have changed anything.
I don't run spashys on boot. My boot runs the

quiet nosplash

in kernel line. I like to see what is going on under the hood.

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