DMA keeps switching off.

For several days my first installation worked fine. So I do not think the BIOS of my Via Technologies IDE interface VT82C586A etc etc should be a problem

After a “Warning: The DMA is switched off” I used hdparm –1 /dev/hda and swithched it back on achieving the following:
Multicount = 16 (on)
IO support = 1 (32-bit)
Unmaskirq = 1 (on)
Using-dma = 1 (on)
Keep settings = 0 (off)
Read only = 0 (off)
Read ahead = 1024 (on)
Geometry = 38792/16/63, sectors = 39102336, start = 0

Is that OK?

I then reboot into my dual boot, choose SUSE 10.1 and all goes well until a blue SUSE screen and a jingle from the speakers. Then the screen goes blank and the HDD light flashes very slowly if at all for ages and nothing appears again. When in frustration I reboot, everything is very slow and DMA is again switched off.

Any ideas?

Is there a way of recording all the messages visible while booting when esc is pressed so that I can study what happened?

Moved: This thread is more suitable in Linux-General and has been moved accordingly to help your thread/question get the exposure it deserves.

You should have more or less of that's what you have at the boot screens in /var/log/messages (in fact, rather more). Log from the boots with problems should be also there. Look especially for possible reason why DMA was turned off at the first place. If you're not sure, just post fragments of the log.