Slackware :: Big Regression Between 13.1 -> 13.37--am I The Only One?

Searching around, I couldn't find anyone talking about this so I wonder if it's something specific to my BIOS and/or chipset, an NVIDIA N67 aka C67 aka GeForce 7000M / nForce 610M IGP on an Acer 5520 laptop. 13.1 has always worked fine, though I needed NVIDIA's binary blob to get full performance from my video. Unfortunately a weird problem has cropped up with 13.37. I didn't notice it at first (when I wrote about my Nouveau woes), but noticed it tonight:

Only while running X, regardless of kernel (2.6.37.6 or 2.6.38.4) or video driver (Nouveau or the proprietary blob), with the laptop plugged in, if I pull the plug the usual ACPI event is generated; however, the IDE/SCSI/SATA subsystem also proceeds to do a reset on the drive, which disconnects it. Following this, the entire computer crashes. Since X is running, I haven't been able to see the console for any panic messages: it just freezes. If I have an xterm open as root, I can still try running commands, but nothing happens, probably because it can't load it from disk, but as soon as I exit back to my normal user, it locks up too and I get nothing. The only way out is to do the ol' holding the power button for 4 seconds thing to force the machine off.

My next idea, when I have time, is to try compiling the latest 2.6.39 kernel with the defaults that Pat gave out; if that fails, then I'll start removing things until it starts working. But it would sure save a lot of time if any of you had ideas or, better, solved this already.