It stated the following:
(EE) intel(0): No kernel modesetting driver detected. (EE) Screen(s) found, but none have a usable configuration.
My configuration at the time of this error was:
9.04 x64, kernel 2.6.28-15-generic, with intel GM965 graphics running xserver-xorg-video-intel: 2:2.9.0~git20091007.03e8e64f-0ubuntu0tormod3~jaunty
First i selected recovery mode to boot into last good configuration.
I struggled with it for a while trying some of the suggestions i could find on google searches. In the process i tried upgrading to the linux kernel 2.6.30-020630 and tried enabling the KMS (Kernel Mode Setting) for Jaunty as described here and that fixed the issue.