ALSO ...

Note that 'pci=off' or 'nopci' likely helps because of the new way UDEV or is it HOTPLUG sees devices -- IIRC, and I'm only repeating what I heard in a thread a few days ago -- but udev which is NEW (old was devfs) -- works exactly the OPPOSITE way than does devfs and has broken many systems -- I'll try to dig up the Usenet thread I'm referring to..

ahhh.....here it is

http://groups.google.com/group/linux...t%3Audev&hl=en

I'm going to reread it now too....

Perhaps because of this udev stuff -- maybe even 'acpi=off' or 'apic=off' (each by itself) might also accomplish what 'pci=off' does....not that you'd want to disable either - but track down the way this newer udev stuff works

Here's some things to look at;
$ dmesg | grep -i udev (thanks underscore )
doesn't not list anything for me (but I have older hardware and an older 2.6.8 kernel) -- but when substituting 'hotplug' i get hits - wonder what yours says
dmesg lists some/most bootup messages - the command above will pluck out the lines with your relevant terms (e.g., 'udev' in bolded example above)