Re: inspiron 8100 freezing

[Tom Sightler]

> Mikael Pettersson:
> > I bet you have CONFIG_SMP or CONFIG_X86_UP_APIC enabled. In that
> > case the hangs on the Inspiron are expected: it's BIOS is buggy.
>
> Ok, what's wrong?  Just telling them something is wrong with their BIOS
> doesn't do much good :)

This seems to affect my Latitude C810 with the latest BIOS (A05).  When I
flashed to that version my linux system started handing at random spots.
Disabling CONFIG_X86_UP_APIC took care of the hangs, but I also lost all of
my battery status support (the batter would always say unknown).

I downgraded the system back to A04 and everything went back to normal.  So
I agree with this question, what's wrong with Dell's BIOS?  It seems that
whatever they do to get XP working breaks Linux badly.  I could complain,
but I'd need to be specific about what they are actually doing wrong.

Later,
Tom