Comment 10 for bug 45636

I do possess this very same laptop model.
The ahci (for SATA hard drive access) module hang with dapper kernel.
The solution is to boot a working kernel, add this line in the
/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist file: "blacklist ahci"
You must regenerate your initramfs after doing that:
update-initramfs -u -k 2.6.15-25-386 (or whatever ubuntu kernel you intend to use)
Then try to reboot: the ata_piix driver will be used instead of ahci, and it works.

It is crucial to boot a working kernel to do the modification as any attempt to write on the hard drive on a faulty kernel is likely to just fail, crashing the computer.

By the way: I maintain a kernel module that implement some missing features
of this laptop (temperature reading, lcd backlight probe and control, multimedia
keys, Fn keys,....) it's at http://sourceforge.net/projects/omnibook/

As it is supported by HAL, it is used by gnome-power-manager and thus integrate well with the Gnome desktop.