merge 375995 358744 thanks This is caused by a change introduced in the i915 driver in 2.6.16, and still exists in 2.6.17. A workaround is either to blacklist i915 or to add the "noirqdebug" kernel parameter (but the latter seems to cause lockup when switching consoles). For more details see http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.linux.network/38493