I am reasonably experienced in linux, but new to Debian. I have installed Lenny (v.5.0.4) on an old acer travelmate 220 which I have rescued from being thrown away. I don't expect much from it, but it will be good for backup/experimentation. I have a few issues when booting, one of which causes the machine randomly to hang on about every third boot, which is the problem that has brought me here. I am wondering whether there is any configuration option / boot parameter to prevent it. I will quote all the boot messages which might be relevant, although I am guessing that only the last ones are important. I am typing what I see, so any differences from actual formatting on screen are due to that.
Boot begins normally then :
At this point the machine freezes. I have to remove the battery to force the reset.[0.153630] pnp 00.01: can't add resource for IO 0x57b0-0x57bb
Loading please wait. . .
Some messages here - no apparent problems
Waiting for /dev to be fully populated ... [10.964803] acer-wmi: No or unsupported WMI interface, unable to load
[14.700325] AC'97 0 access is not valid [0xffffffff], removing mixer.
[14.700406] Unable to initialize codec #0
[15.723168] codec_read 1: semaphore is not ready for register 0x54
lspci output includes "00.1f.5 Multimedia audio controller. Intel Corporation 82801CA/CAM AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 02)"
Googling throws up a few references to "AC'97 0 access is not valid [0xffffffff], removing mixer", but I have not found any which involve the machine hanging.
Whilst the hang is the main problem, it would also be tidy to stop the search for the WMI interface, which will never be found, and to know the significance of that first "can't add resource for IO" .. message.
TIA
Edit : I have found this post (waiting for /dev to be fully populated hangs), under Hardware here, which seems to be much the same thing. No solution was posted.