EDAC error

[Alan Cox]

>             The Error is as follows: EDAC i5000 MC0: nonfatal errors
> found 0=800.

Your system is logging errors. That in itself is not good news but could
be BIOS triggered I guess. The full EDAC dumped values it logs if this
was a CPU error would be informative. If its logging a PCI error and you
get just one it may be noise from boot and is ok

>             The system runs very very slow (I have a p3 that is faster
> then this system is).

First guess: BIOS memory tables are wrong. That shows up differently in
Linux and Windows. Boot with mem=1G option (if you have > 1.2GB) and see
if its suddenely faster. If so then you can either adjust the cached ram
settings or use mem= to trim the BIOS uncached memory off.

>             There are no errors under Windows, and there are no errors
> reported by Dell's diagnostic tools.

Dell's tools are pretty basic and windows generally doesn't do much
hardcore error checking. I don't think however your EDAC and slowness are
neccessarily bits of the same bug (although they may both be crap BIOS)

Alan