ACPI Testing

[John Reiser]

> Please reply to this thread with your experiences [ACPI], good or bad.

FC1 killed my 2.9yr-old Dell Inspiron 4000 laptop, which dual booted WinME/RH9.
The first reboot (after FC1 firstboot had everything setup), WinME had to use
Safe Mode when it should have booted normally.  The second {boot FC1, shutdown,
reboot WinME} required yanking the battery in order to unwedge the processor,
then another WinME Safe Mode boot.  The third {boot FC1, shutdown, reboot}
killed the machine completely.  Power ON managed to blink the keyboard LEDs
and the power status LEDs, and spin the harddrive, but then everything shut
down in about 2 seconds.  No GRUB splash screen, no BIOS test screen,
no display at all.

The first two round trips to Dell warranty repair (after more than an hour
on the phone each time, being spoon fed the diagnostic instructions, and
taking the machine apart piece by piece) yielded no apparent change, even
though the service memos claimed that the machine had been fixed.  The third
round trip resulted in a phone call from a Senior Technician who politely
chewed me out for running Fedora.  (He had booted another machine using
my harddrive, and saw the GRUB multiboot splash screen.)  I got my laptop
back; it still would not Power ON.

After a removing the battery and waiting many weeks for everything
to discharge completely (including all BIOS CMOS settings), I was able
to resurrect the machine enough to boot WinME, then do a clean install
of KRUD 2.4.20-28.9 [RH9].  Everything is now back to the original state
before trying FC1 [the BIOS was upgraded to version A23 on the first trip
to the repair depot].  Multibooting KRUD 9 and WinME works.  Needless to say,
I'm not going to install any version of Fedora on a laptop for a long time,
unless I see it work first on identical hardware.

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