Kernel boot problems or is my hard drive failing ?

[Alan Cox]

> If I power down my laptop via the usual KStart->Shutdown means, it can
> take up to 4 restart attempts before it fully boots. 

That sounds like wonky hardware

> It has no problem launching grub and the kernel selection screen.  That
> it does reliably every time.   After that, there are issues.  

If it launches grub the disk is fine (Grub is loaded off the disk) and I
assume the laptop has one disk.

> Twice I will get a back screen with a flashing cursor.  Then I will get
> an ehci -19 error.  Then it will boot properly. 

The EHCI error is from USB so perhaps points to a USB problem.

> Is anyone else experiencing a problem booting ?   Does this sound like a
> kernel problem or is my hard drive failing ? 

If a soft reboot fails but a hard reboot (reset button held down) works
I'd suspect its something hardware related not getting properly
shutdown/restarting etc.

For diagnostics boot with "verbose norhgb" that should spew lots of
messages and not hide it all with the graphical stuff - meaning you can
actually see what is going on. See where that hangs.

You could also see if reboot=acpi helps. That changes the way the reboot
is done and might be better for modern machines. Len Brown is currently
collecting data on making this a default so your box may be a useful data
point.