Dell OptiPlex 745 reboot problem

[Bj ø rn Tore Sund]

Tony Molloy wrote:
> On Friday 05 September 2008 16:05:04 Mike McCarty wrote:
> > Tony Molloy wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > I've just installed Fedora-9 on a lab of Dell OptiPlex 745 (SFF)
> > > machines. ( only in 1 lab TG )
> > >
> > > After running firstboot when I went to reboot the machines they just hang
> > > and I had to do a hard reboot. I thought this was a minor glitch and
> > > ignored it.
> > >
> > > Now however when the machines boot into Fedora-9 the "reboot" and
> > > "suspend" buttons do not work. The windowing system just shuts down and I
> > > get a text prompt and the machines just hang there.
> > 
> > Hang? That's a vague term. If you type on the keyboard, do characters
> > get echoed? If you have a text prompt, then can you not do a
> >
>
> Hang means exactly what it means. The machines just go dead!!! No input from
> the keyboard accepted. Only thing to do is a hard reboot.

Got tons of Dell Optiplex 7XX, had that exact problem.  Solution is
two-step:
1. Flash up the bios.  The ones they're shipped with suck bigtime.
2. Add the kernel parameter "reboot=bios" to all kernel lines in
/boot/grub/menu.lst

Solved it for us.

-BT
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Bjørn Tore Sund       Phone: 555-84894   Email:   bjorn.sund at it.uib.no
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