(Pending SOLVED) System freezes (locks up) on start up after grub menu selection

[Cressida]

When I turn on my system it boots up through the grub menu and then locks up.   I can turn off by only turning off power at the power supply.  I have to do this from 2-5 times and then eventually it seems to work like it should and boots normally all the way to the desktop.  Strange.

No optical devices or 3D graphics, just the basic standard install of the lastest PCL-KDE 2010.10 with updates, all on an new formated HD.

It always freezes at this line:

"Loading pata_ali module Pata_ali 00:12.0 : PCI INT A > GSI 19 (level, low) > IRQ19"

About 10-15 lines up I see this line. I don't know if it is related but it looks like it could be:

"Pata_acpi  00:12.0 : PCI INT A disabled"

Does anyone know anything about what could be causing it to stop on this line and how to correct or fix it?

UPDATE:  Appears to be due to not using a swap partition on the installation.  More details to follow after further testing...

"...Basically, in order to run with little or no swap, the kernel has to lie and tell all comers that memory is available. If that turns out to be wrong, then it KILLS whatever program ends up actually needing the memory at some future time when none is available. "

[Ramchu]

I searched and found references to kernel bug

What kernel do you have installed ?

Possibly a kernel reinstall or a kernel upgrade

I am just guessing, but I hope this helps !

[Cressida]

[root@localhost james]# uname -a

Linux localhost.localdomain 2.6.32.24-pclos1.a64 #1 SMP Sun Oct 3 13:18:37 CDT 2010 i686 AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 4000+ GNU/Linux

Update:  I thought I had the 2.6.33.7a64 Kernel installed (as I have listed below) but from the looks of the above I don't!

I'll update and see if that helps.  Thanks for your comments!

[Cressida]

Nope changing the kernel makes no difference.  System still locked up three times at that line.  Fourth attempt worked fine.

[Old-Polack]

Nope changing the kernel makes no difference.  System still locked up three times at that line.  Fourth attempt worked fine.

Time to get into your system, physically, and check that all connections are secure. To do this with cables and add in cards means removing each connection and reconnecting them, not just feeling that they seem secure. That includes RAM cards as well.

[genomega]

I have the same problem on one of my boxes and I tracked it down to the cpu being throttled due to overheating.