BIOS settings for Thinkpads using Ubuntu

[Shannon McMackin]

techlists at comcast.net wrote:
> But I did eventually get Ubuntu installed; it's running off the hard 
> disk and it's still randomly, and frequently, freezing.
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Wade Smart" <wadesmart at gmail.com>
> To: "Ubuntu user technical support, not for general discussions" 
> <ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com>
> Sent: Saturday, January 31, 2009 4:58:22 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
> Subject: Re: BIOS settings for Thinkpads using Ubuntu
> 
> 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.
>  >
>  > Paul
>  >
> 
> 20090131 1557 GMT-5
> 
> Paul i have a R50e and had the same trouble at first. It was the cd I
> burned. It worked fine on other machines but not that laptop. I finally
> just went to the alt install cd and it worked.
> 
> Wade
> 
Do you have compiz enabled?

Try disabling it under appearance - visual effects.

If it doesn't freeze after disabling compiz, re-enable it and install 
ccsm and check the general tab for 2 settings:

Unredirect Fullscreen Windows
Force Independent output painting

Make sure they're unchecked.

These 2 settings were hanging my T61 all the time...