Known issue....I think it was fixed in one of the later kernels for RHEL 3. Download the latest kernel rpm from Red Hat. If you own RHEL 3, then you SHOULD have purchased a subscription of some sort and set up a login with Red Hat.
Go to the website:
https://rhn.redhat.com
and log in with the username and password you set up with Red Hat when you bought the product. From there you can search for the latest kernel package, which is 2.4.21-27.0.2.