Comment 33 for bug 417599

I too have a wonderfull Dell c400 and the info in this bug helped me get suspend working. Thanks. However, my config of Ubuntu seems a bit different so the instructions that work for me are listed below. Note that the splash boot option caused the cosole video to core dump in combination with nomodeset so I removed it.

Fix for Ubuntu 9.10:

1a) In /etc/default/grub
add i915.modeset=0 nomodeset to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULTcat. This disables the new kernel mode-setting (KMS):
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet nomodeset"
or
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet i915.modeset=0"

1b) Save and run update-grub.

2. In /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/98smart-kernel-video
add return 1 in have have_smart_intel:

have_smart_intel()
{
    # Not sure which option cuses blank screen after suspend restore but
    # disabling this section works.
return 1

3) Save and reboot.