"Do I need to convert this to a question (just saw the link on the page)?"
Nah, no need for that. Thanks for taking the time to make a nice detailed report. We need as much feedback as possible, so this will definitely help. >From experience, 32bit is little less prone to upgrade bugs, but even if its 32 or 64bit , a small portion of users still may experience them. Usually, small updates patches always fix most of those issues, but in your case you're not getting them! This is indeed weird... At this time the quickest fix, is to reinstall to a separate partition. In fact upgrading directly is not the default anymore (to avoid stuff like this from occurring). Installing using a cd or usb is much more "fail-proof". Note: am not a direct developer or staff member, just a normal volunteer around here, because the developers have been extremely busy lately stomping on some of the older, bigger bugs and making sure they're not left out from the next Ubuntu release in april. Hope to have been of some help! Cheers! -- automated updates do not run https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/668951 You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
