I'm running Fedora 7 on a Dell Precision M65 (2GHz core 2 duo. I had to add hpet=disable to the kernel args to get it to boot after install. I find that the machine boots fine when plugged in, but when I try to boot while running on battery I get the "apm: bios not found" warning and things stop dead. It's not 100% of the time, but very close to it. I have discovered that going into the BIOS setup pages before trying to boot seems to work around the problem. That suggests some sort of hardware initialization that the kernel is not doing (or perhaps not properly) but the BIOS is. Looking through bugzilla, bug 241249 has some similarities, but I don't think it's the same thing. Someone more informed might disagree. I can easily duplicate this if need be, and I'm technical enough to gather detailed information if that helps. It has been a few years since I've wielded a kernel debugger, but it doesn't scare me.
Test kernels at http://people.redhat.com/davej may resolve the problem. Also the ususal workarounds (together or one at a time): clocksource=acpi_pm nohz=off maxcpus=1 highres=off
Hello, I'm reviewing this bug as part of the kernel bug triage project, an attempt to isolate current bugs in the fedora kernel. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/KernelBugTriage I'm CC'ing myself to this bug and closing it as it appears to be resolved - there has been no response to Chuck's request to test later kernels. If I have erred, please forgive me and re-open with any additional information you are able to give. I will then try and assist you if I can. Cheers Chris