I’ve been running Ubuntu 9.10 on the notebook for a week. The OpenSuSE 11.2 install goes fine, but on first boot it only goes 8-9 seconds into the bootup and hangs. Sometimes I can get it to boot by adding “acpi=off” to the FAILSAFE options.
To be fair, I seemed to have an intermittent problem with Ubuntu 9.10 in a very similar way… But it was temporary, I have not had it since around the time I ran updates. I never needed acpi=off.
Appears to have the newest BIOS. Several items on the “firmware test” on the CD boot display “fail”.
Hopefully this will help others with this notebook or similar.
serrs wrote:
> I’ve been running Ubuntu 9.10 on the notebook for a week. The OpenSuSE
> 11.2 install goes fine, but on first boot it only goes 8-9 seconds into
> the bootup and hangs. Sometimes I can get it to boot by adding
> “acpi=off” to the FAILSAFE options.
This might not help at all, but it will not hurt trying the “noapic” switch
at the options on boot.
OpenSuSE 11.1 boots and also Fedora 11. Fedora 12 does not boot just like OpenSuSE 11.2. It seems to be newer kernels not liking this hardware (or BIOS).
Fedora 12 gives some stacktrace output.
“DMAR hardware is malfunctioning”
From what I read, the BIOS reports the computer has XYZ features. The kernel believes it and tries to use it, even though it’s not there.