Hello, all. I'm getting Debian Woody installed on my Inspiron, and am struggling with getting XFree86 going. The details are; Inspiron 1100 with 1024x768 LCD, Intel 845GL onboard graphics, 768MB of RAM. The BIOS is version A31, with video RAM set to 8MB. I've got LILO set up to let me boot from precompiled kernels of 2.2, 2.4, and now 2.6.7 vintage. I downloaded XFree86 version 4.4 binaries, and ran the 4.4 version of xf86config to generate a decent config file, which I compared to versions on the web that are claimed to work for the Inspiron.

The problem is that when the kernel tries to load the APM module, it can't find the BIOS. And when XFree86 fires up, I get

(==Using config file: "/etc/X11/XF86Config-4"
apm: BIOS not found.

Fatal server error:
Caught signal 11. Server aborting

In /var/log/syslog, there's an entry;

laptopdebian kernel: Dell Inspiron with broken BIOS detected. Refusing to enable the local APIC.

and

laptopdebian kernel: apm: BIOS not found.
laptopdebian modprobe: FATAL: Error inserting apm: No such device

What to do?

Try to disable APIC in the BIOS and in the kernel. At LILO boot prompt, type:

noapic

Hope it helps.