Lock ups!!

[chazworth]

After installation , I had many lock ups at random times. I did notice that it occured regularly when shutting down Thunderbird. I thought that my installation was corrupt some how. I reloaded and found the same sort of lockups. I parused throught my BIOS and came across something called "HPET" which the default was enabled, so I set it to disable. When I rebooted, no more lockups. I don't know what "HPET" is used for, but maybe others might be having this same trouble. Any ideas?

[GreyGeek]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Precision_Event_Timer

The following operating systems are known not to be able to use HPET: Windows XP,^{[note 2]} Windows Server 2003, and earlier Windows versions, Linux kernels prior to 2.6.
...
^With a Linux kernel, you need the newer "rtc-cmos" hardware clock device driver rather than the original "rtc" driver.

Devices known to not work with LInux using HPET:
http://www.fogproject.org/wiki/index...lematicDevices
You might find your box listed there, with possible workarounds.

[chazworth]

Thanks, GreyGeek. Is "HPET" something that I need? I seem to be having no troubles with anything that I do now that it is disabled.

[GreyGeek]

Disabling HPET could affect the efficiency of the processor, possibly preventing it from entering deep sleep states (C-states) as often as it could, which would save more power (and consequently produce less heat). Ergo, watch your fan and cpu temps. (there are plasma widgets you can drop on your desktop to display temps, etc.) If the fan runs all the time and the computer still gets hotter than normal come back and we'll try to figure out a way to keep it running cooler.

This explains the various timers in Linux: http://davesmisc.wordpress.com/2011/...kernel-timers/