Laptop crashes when ac power cord is plugged in or removed

i have a dell inspiron duo 1090.  whenever i plug in, or remove the power cord the system crashes.  it appears as though it kills xorg or xserver or whatever in the process.  basically the screen goes to terminal and it sends a bunch of text really fast, and then freezes.  i'm not sure how to get the message as the computer is frozen at the time...or if it would be helpful.  if anyone has experienced this or has any ideas i'd be really happy to get this taken care of.  thanks!

@boohoomill:  i've been trying to recreate the crash to check the logs.  strangely i haven't been able to.  i suppose that's good, for now.  i'll post the logs if i can get the system to crash again.  it's really weird that it did that EVERY time i plugged in or unplugged the ac power cord....until i wanted to check the logs.
@ewaller:  I am using Gnome, i have not installed acpid, laptop-tools though, or any other type of laptop power saving stuff like cpu frequency scaling.  i suppose that i have the basic power management package that comes with gnome.....at least i think that it belongs to gnome.

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