Ubuntu 9.10: Freezes while installing software from Update Manager

"Do the freezes happen at other times as well or only during updates? System freezes can be caused by wonky drivers and bad hardware, and can be difficult to diagnose.

Consider booting to the console and running your updates from there.

Choose a ""recovery mode"" in the boot menu. If your system is giving you that boot error, see if there's an older kernel version in the boot menu and use that. (If you don't see the boot menu, hold down Shift after your BIOS screen to make the menu appear.)
When the system presents you with a recovery menu, choose the netroot option.

This gets you to a root prompt. Be careful; you're the superuser now.

Run aptitude update and let it finish. This updates the cache of available packages.
Run aptitude full-upgrade. This will install all available package updates, so if your system freezes are due to the update itself, your system will freeze here. If not, your system should be completely updated once this finishes.

Now try rebooting.

If you get the same error at boot, choose an older kernel from the boot menu and run this in a terminal:

sudo update-initramfs -u

(source) (from bug #1 and bug #2)

If the system does freeze during your console session upgrade, try upgrading a few packages at a time. You can attempt this in the console (run the aptitude command by itself to get a console GUI; select a few packages to upgrade with +) or in Xwindows (by selecting only a few packages at a time in Update Manager). If the update complains about missing dependencies, go ahead and install those too."