Can anyone explain to me why my T22 thinkpad will only boot when I give the option to turn pci off?

No current distribution will boot on this laptop unless I pass pci=off.

Did you try.. PCI=ACPI as well? Or just.. =off...

No, I only tried pci=off. I will try pci=acpi. Thanks for the help....I forget to try these things when I'm frustrated.

Unfortunately passing pci=acpi did not work either.

Anyone else have any ideas??

Make sure you have PnP Disabled/No in the BIOS. If that's not possible, then boot with pci=biosirq; this has the same effect as turning off PnP in the BIOS and forcing the BIOS to perform hardware detection for the OS.

If you still have trouble booting, it could be the power management routines getting in the way. If that's the case turn off ACPI with acpi=off.

Another thing that can cause hangups in booting is APIC (Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller - not to be confused with ACPI). If that can't be turned off in the BIOS, pass 'noapic' as a kernel boot parameter. With my desktop, it used to hang after 'checking module dependencies'; noapic fixed that.

Other BIOS settings: make sure you are not using Shadow Video BIOS (set to No) and turn off Boot Virus Protection if applicable. HTH.

Thank you very much for the responses.

Using 'pci=biosirq' seems to be working (knock on wood). My question is this. Do I need to pass that every time I boot or can I pass it once and it will turn off pnp inderinitely?

Again thank you for your help.

No, it needs to be done for every boot. You do this by editing /etc/lilo.conf and adding 'pci=biosirq' to the 'append=' line under the 'label = "linux"' entry. (you need to be root to do this) For example, if the line in /etc/lilo.conf is:

append="quiet devfs=mount hdc=ide-scsi"

then change it to read:

append="quiet pci=biosirq devfs=mount hdc=ide-scsi"

Save the file, then issue this command at a console, as root:

lilo

This will re-configure your bootloader, after which the 'pci=biosirq' will be set automatically for you at each boot.

Well successful booting has once again come to an end.

Using pic=biosirq worked fine for about a day. Now that option no longer works. I then used acpi=off which worked once. I used noapic after that, which also worked once.

I'm so confused by this. I just don't understand why it's so sparatic.

Describe the steps you have taken to alter your computer's setup. Post the output of /etc/lilo.conf. I need this info to get to the bottom of why this is happening to you.

I don't use lilo as my boot manager, I'm using grub. I haven't changed any of the config files as of yet. I've been testing the parameters at boot time by appending them to the kernel line.

When the system boots up I press 'e' to edit the kernel line, I then append the parameters you listed to the end of it. (only one at a time) Like so:

The option I added is in red.

Try using all the kernel boot parameters that I suggested all at once. So you would make you kernel bootup line:

kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.20-8 ro root=LABEL=/ hdc=ide-scsi pci=biosirq noapic acpi=off

See how that goes.

Also, remember that editing your grub startup at boot is a once-only deal. To permanently enter your boot options and have them take effect automagically every time you boot you need to open your Grub config file (usually /boot/grub/menu.lst) and add those parameters to the end of your "kernel" line.

Yea, I know. I've been editing it every time I boot. Pain in the ass, but its easier than having to boot and edit the file everytime.

I'll try this out and see how things go.

I'm thinking this maybe a hardware problem. I've taken out my interenal ethernet card (not pcmcia) and its booted successfully 10 times in a row.