if irqpoll doesn't work for others, turn back on the RAID in your bios. and set up your disks as not in an array. This worked for me.
-- [feisty] boot stalls on "starting kernel event manager" https://launchpad.net/bugs/81164 -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs