Hello, this is my first post so please be nice : )

I'm having a problem getting RHEL 4 update 4 booting on Sony SZ-series laptops at work.

Key Points:
1. The OS has been installed onto a USB flash drive
2. It is able to boot on all our other laptops
3. Boot parameters are "nosmp noapic nolapic nomce"

Starting udev completes fine, but then it hangs on this:

I think this points towards an IRQ conflict, however Sony's BIOS is a dumbed down version that lacks any useful configuration options.

Anyone had this problem or can offer some guidance?

Thank you.

Why are you disabling power management in laptops?

Boot it in verbose mode and provide more details (replace 'quiet' in the kernel line )

The power management (as well as the other boot parameters) being disabled is a requirement for the software we're using.

Some extra info that may be useful is that if I disable the uhci-hcd(USB 1.0) module from loading, it boots up fine but lacking USB 1.0 support.

Also, quiet is not being used in the boot params.

When I boot into rescue mode off CD and look at the drive, there are no log entries pertaining to the previous "failed" boot. If you want, I can give you the log messages from a boot where I disabled uhci-hcd from loading.

Here is what I copied off the screen after it freezes:
After that it just sits there for a few minutes before it starts spitting out "INIT: cannot execute "/sbin/mingetty"" errors.

Thank you for your reply.

try adding "ignore IRQ 11" in /etc/... etc
That is one way of resolving conflicts

amani, I don't know what file you are referring to, but I have found a "work-around" that will suffice for now:

If I add "irqfixup irqpoll" along side the other boot parameters, it will boot with full USB 1.0 and 2.0 support. The Disabling IRQ #11 error still shows up, but it seems these parameters help the OS get around that problem. Thanks for your help amani.