Michael Elsdörfer wrote:
Have you used Linux on this machine before now? If not, the problem may be a hardware issue. You may have a broken BIOS which doesn't allow the kernel to do something it thinks it sould be able to do. Try booting with the kernel parameters acpi=off or noapic.Thanks for responding Mark. Yes, as I mentioned, I had a custom debian sarge kernel running on it previously for years. I'll give noacpi a try, but since this is a live machine and I'll have to schedule a downtime, I'd welcome any other suggestions anyone might have. Michael
D'oh! Missed the mention of Sarge.I had some issues with certain motherboards when everyone was switching from 2.4 kernels to 2.6 kernels. Two ASUS consumer boards had broken APIC code. And recently, there appeared a virtual device driver issue in XP on another ASUS board after installing a new antivirus program. Something in the ACPI caused a conflict. The problem was a buggy BIOS. Disabling APM in the BIOS setup was the workaround.
(Of course, a better solution would be to use a different antivirus. Even better: Putting Debian on the machine, and having done with Windows. Sigh. If wishes were horses...)
-- Mark Allums