Miscellaneous > Technical Support

Do store bought PCs suck, or just Compaq, other?

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H_TeXMeX_H:

--- Quote from: GenuineAdvantage ---I tried tinkering with pretty much everything in the bios. No change. This is the end game, I'm afraid this one may have to be lost since I'll have to leave the PC behind, it's my mother's PC. Ironic I didn't have any problem with the other ones including a laptop which I thought would give problems.

Anyways, this is the BIOS error it gives:

..MP-BIOS bug. timer not connected to IO-APIC
PCI: cannot allocate resource region 3 of device 0000:00:00.0
hdc: ide_intr: huh? expected NULL handler on exit
--- End quote ---

boot with the following kernel flags:

noapic noioapic

That might just work ... I know that 2.6.16 and up kernels won't boot on my laptop without this, due to POS BIOS

You may also try using a live CD with a kernel 2.6.15 or older and it may work without issue. (This includes DSL)

GenuineAdvantage:
The ubuntu forums was the first place I went to ask. I got no reply. Found a thread about it, none of the suggestions worked. The thing is that even selecting to check the cd gives the same error, so it's an IO problem. Can't do much about that other than switching computers. I had already tried the kernel flags. noapic noioapic apic=off ioapic=off. nothing. I'm afraid that POS PC is stuck with a POS OS. Btw, I tried a live cd with a 2.6.12 kernel distro and appearently had the same problem. Nothing loaded.

And about the OS blocking BIOS thing. It even loaded an XP disk, a pirate XP disk, windows 98, windows ME. So I guess if it is that, the BIOS does have it's preference.

H_TeXMeX_H:
Whoah ... really :eek: Holy shit man ... what's going on, that shouldn't happen. Could it really be it locks out all OSs but Window$. Dammit, I'll have to look around for stuff on this tomorrow.

Hmmm ... have you tried BartPE any BSD or OpenSolaris live CDs ?

I'm betting at least BartPE should work.

worker201:
Damn, here's ANOTHER page that suggests you have major compatibility issues between your graphics card and your motherboard:
http://www.uwsg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0311.1/0544.html

And another:
http://www.uwsg.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0607.0/1409.html

I highly doubt this is a hardware lockout.  It's probably just some really fucked up one-in-a-million hardware configuration.  But I guess I should remember that when Microsoft was toying with lockout security on the Xbox, they hid the important BIOS code in the GPU, and then left a little decoy Flash BIOS in the expected location.  So they're not necessarily above this sort of thing.

I still think it's a "fluke" accident, and there is some parameter you can pass somewhere or kernel config you can toggle.

GenuineAdvantage:
Yeah, it could be just a fluke. Like netscape and real player slowing down on windows. *shrug* it just happens!

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