ubuntu 12.04 lts - No video mode activated

After 5 hours of debugging, I finally was able to work around the issue.
In /etc/default/grub
Commented out:
GRUB_DEFAULT
GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT
GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT_QUIET
GRUB_TIMEOUT
Changed
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="nomodeset"
Get rid of the reference to "splash" because that is what is crashing.
Ref 1
Ref 2
Ref 3
Ref 4
Ref 5
I also did the following:
cd /usr/share/grub/
sudo cp *.pf2 /boot/grub
Finally I could boot but the mouse pointer was MIA.
Did this to get it back:
sudo modprobe -r psmouse
sudo modprobe psmouse proto=imps




NOW I CAN FINALLY CATCH UP ON MY WORK!