BIOS settings for Thinkpads using Ubuntu

[NoOp]

On 01/31/2009 01:53 PM, techlists at comcast.net wrote:
> I just recently bought a refurbished Thinkpad T41 laptop off the IBM
> website and intended to configure it for XP/Ubuntu dual boot. The
> laptop worked fine and ran stable with anything related to Windows
> (XP and I also tried Vista), but had frequent random freezes with
> anything related to Linux (the Ubuntu install CD and a Helix live
> CD).
> 
> I did eventually get Ubuntu installed with the install CD but it
> still keeps freezing up at random moments; it does not seem to freeze
> up at anything specific.
> 
> I let memtest run all night to check for faulty memory (no errors),
> and ran through all the IBM PC Doctor hardware tests (under XP) to
> see if there were hardware errors with anything (again, no errors).
> 
> I've had a great experience in the past with some older Thinkpads
> under similar setups (dual boot Windows/Linux) so this is kind of
> puzzling. I don't think there's any faulty hardware involved because
> of the hardware tests run, and the fact that everything works fine
> under Windows (unless there's some weird problem that slips under the
> radar on these diagnostic programs)..
> 
> So I'm wondering if there's some BIOS settings that need to be
> tweaked to make things work more smoothly under Linux. On older BIOSs
> there used to be a setting for non-Windows OSs, but this Thinkpad
> BIOS didn't have such an option (that I could find anyway).
> 
> Anyone have a suggestion? I've got 7 days to return for a refund if I
> can't resolve it, so there's still another few days to troubleshoot
> the problem.

You might check on
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Installing_Ubuntu_on_a_ThinkPad_T41
and
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:T41

I'd also recommend 8.04 (alternate CD) to see if the issue is with the
Intrepid kernel(s).

Plus do a search on launchpad for T41:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu