Can somebody please help me with this one. I have scoured the internet for about a month now trying to figure it out. Everything works under mandrake 9.2 except for the power management. Can somebody walk me step-by step from a clean mandrake install to getting ACPI to work? Normally I can figure this crap out so I'm a little dissapointed in myself.

I had similar problems with power on my HP Pavilion ze5170 laptop. Here is what I had to do:

1. make sure acpi and acpid are installed

2. update lilo.conf (in /etc I think). change acpi=ht or whatever its setting is to acpi=foce. Apparently, ACPI doesn't recognize power management features in some BIOSs, even though it is supported, so you have to force it. Also, some posts I read said to add apm=off, too. I did that, and it worked, but I don't know if it's necessary.

3. edit modules.conf (in /etc too, I think). add this to the bottom of the file, one on each line:

ac
battery
thermal

4. cross your fingers and reboot.

I hope that helps.

::crosses everything that can be crossed:: thanks.

Any idea how to get suspend and such to work?

If I leave acpi=ht on boot line, my kernel reports
If I try acpi=on or acpi=force, the screen goes blank and the system freezes. I have to boot an alternate kernel to fix.

BTW, I'm using Mandrake 9.2 which came with the acpi code, I just had to enable it in config.

Any ideas?

I had the same problem with an Hp laptop I got yesterday and Mandrake 9.2.
The only way I found to solve the problem was to use a newer kernel: 2.6.3. I got it from the Mandrake cooker.
For some informations on how to install it see:
http://ozzzy.dhis.org/kernel26.html.
Then you have to add nolapic in the lilo.conf (in the \etc directory) .
Don't forget to edit the lilo.conf so that you can boot with your older kernel, because the new one might not work.

In my case not everything works with the new kernel. Also the power support is only partially working. I'm trying to fix that.