I saw this suggestion on an Ubuntu forum, however I tried it and it's not working for me. Hopefully I'm doing it right. Give it a shot and see what happens:

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Hi all, after some googling, I've found the solution to this. You just need to disable acpi by adding the kernel option "acpi=off". So my menu.lst entry now looks like this:

title Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.15-25-k7
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.15-25-k7 root=/dev/sda2 ro acpi=off noapic nolapic quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.15-25-k7
savedefault
boot

And now I'm happily running the K7 kernel! If you can't boot in order to make this change, you can edit the kernel options before booting at the grub menu.

Another tip, in menu.lst, add your kernel options to this section:

# defoptions=acpi=off noapic nolapic quiet splash

Note you don't need to uncomment it. This is read by dpkg when installing new kernels, so you can automatically keep your kernel options when the kernel is upgraded.
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Nick

A bug report has been filed at:

https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+bug/48284

It's good to see that someone else is experiencing the same problem. However, no solution has been presented yet

Nick

*HUGE SIGH OF RELIEF*

Well I think I got it working in my case. I needed to install the 686 kernel for things to work. Below are instructions on how to install Ubuntu server 6.06 as a guest virtual machine in Windows VMware workstation 5.5.1 using the Ubuntu 686 kernel. These instructions may also apply if you're not using VMware.

How to Install the Ubuntu 686 Kernel
====================================

1.) boot to the Ubuntu 6.06 server install cd. Choose 'Rescue a broken system.'

2.) when you get to the Rescue Operations screen choose "execute a shell in /dev/discs/disco/part1", this option may read a little differently on your system.

3.) Click continue if another screen appears.

4.) At the prompt, type: sudo apt-get install linux-686

5.) You will be asked if you want to continue, type: y

6.) The installation of the 686 kernel will begin. It looks like an internet connection is required so the install files can be downloaded from the ubuntu website.

7.) When the installation is done, type: exit

8.) You should be returned to the Rescue Operations screen. Choose the last option: reboot the system. Make sure you're not booting to the install cd!

9.) Give the system a few moments to boot-up. At last, you should be placed at the login: prompt.

10.) Celebrate!

Helpful websites:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=85917
This is a very nice piece of documentation that explains all of the different Ubuntu kernel versions.

http://www.tuxme.com/node/544
This is the website that gave me the idea to try the 686 kernel. This specific document also talks about installing Ubuntu on laptops.

I really wish ubuntu would detect which kernel is best for a system. It's things like this that I think keep people away from linux. Linux definitely requires a lot of patience sometimes but I think it's worth it in the end.

To all of you who replied with suggestions, THANK YOU SOOOOOOOO MUCH! You're truly a demonstration of the Ubuntu spirit.

Now to finish setting up my LAMP server!

Nick