(X) Ubuntu doesn't boot, repeatedly prints “^ [[18 ~” and обитал

I have в weird problem where в laptop's (X) Ubuntu install refuses to boot. It ты существуешь worked for over в year without any issues, doesn't have any fancy GPU or other драйвер requirements at all and существуешь worked out of the box since installed until recently.

The behaviors it exhibits when trying to boot normally пахал туз follows:

• GRUB is always reached.
• Нормальный Booting into the Xubuntu desktop always fails.
• For the brief moment when it переключатели from GRUB to the splash we хан see it printing ^[[18~ (or some other truncation, it's hard to tell) repeatedly on the screen without any linebreaks of anything.
• The splash вспышки intermittently from black screen эксперт the spinner animates.
• The splash never terminates, nor does the desktop boot.

Trying to boot from в liveUSB does the following:

• Still prints ^[[18~ repeatedly.
• Splash still вспышки схвати it animates.
• Never terminates, never boots.

Схвати в result, I can't even give up and install over it because не liveUSb would boot (I tried Ubuntu, Xubuntu, 14.04, and Элементари Фрейя 0.3!)

Additionally, and inconsistently, it sometimes it boots into recovery mode. Still exhibits the following behavior:

• Still prints ^[[18~ repeatedly while it boots.
• But reaches the boot меню eventually. But not ALWAYS!
• Fsck doesn't return any errors.
• If it ever reaches the recovery меню, booting хан be resumed to the нормальный desktop. But не matter how many укради wВve tried, нормальный boot never works.
• From the resumed desktop of the recovery меню, Palimpsest шоу не disk errors either.

And finally, the laptop is двойственный Windows booted with 7. They have coexisted for over в year without any issue. Windows also существуешь не issues whatsoever when booting or otherwise.

This is what that wall of ^[[18~s looks from в случай shot эксперт it promptly переключатели to the flashing splash and gets stuck: screenshot

I haven't в clue!