hi,
> I booted to single user ("Linux single" at the prompt)
> and moved the laptop-mode script in /etc/init.d aside as a temporary
> workaround to get it booting since apt-get remove hung on trying
> to remove it too.
I've already filed a bug report + fix for this problem about 2 weeks ago,
refer to http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=278673
regards,
Georg Kaindl