hda: lost interrupt

Hi,

I have been running Knoppix 4.0.2 hard disk install for several months and lately I have been having trouble when I reboot my PC. The boot procedure will hang with the message "hda: lost interrupt". If I cycle power, it may boot OK. It used to be that one power off cycle would allow the knoppix to boot, but lately the number of power cycles has grown. The last time I rebooted it took six power cycles. Surprisingly, I have had no trouble booting live CD's like the Knoppix 4.0.2 CD or Mepis or Kubuntu 6.06 LTS. Once I do succeed botting the system, it seems to run fine. My current uptime is 6 days, 12 hours.

I thought it might be a heat problem, but I have let the system set overnight before trying to boot it and it didn't seem to make any difference.

smartctl indicates no errors, so I think that a disk problems are not the explanation.

I have an inexpensive motherboard with VIA KM266Pro Northbridge and VT8235 Southbridge chipsets which provide the Ultra DMA ATA133/100/66/33. My cpu is an AMD Sempron 2800. Is that likely to be the problem?

I am running kernel 2.6.12. Is there is a known device driver problem for my IDE hardware?

The next time I have to reboot, I will install 5.0.1 to see if that makes a difference.

I would appreciate any suggestions, before I replace my system board, CPU and memory. Also, I am not pleased with the prospect of giving up Knoppix.

Thanks in advance,
Don

boot with cheatcode:
knoppix noapic

Underscore,

Thanks for your suggestion. I am so gunshy about booting that I will wait until I have to reboot to test the option. I have added the option to my grub configuration so when I next have to reboot, I will give it a try.

Thanks Again,

Don