I had the same problem as the original poster on an AMD64. Since a recent update, however, I don't have a splash screen at all anymore. The screen remains dark (with a blinking cursor in the top left corner) during startup and shutdown of the computer. Everything works fine, just the splash does not show up anymore.
-- usplash appears black and white (grayscale) on amd64 https://launchpad.net/bugs/67545 -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
