Distribution: Red Hat 9 Hardware Environment: Dell Dimension 4600, >256MB memory Software Environment: Nothing unusual Problem Description: I have some Dell Dimension 4600 workstations that suffer a strange problem after they reboot: the BIOS drops into "OS install mode", issues a notice that it is limiting memory to 256MB, and forces me to enter the BIOS and drop out of OS install mode before I can boot with the full complement of memory (typically 1GB). Steps to reproduce: Simply boot into a 2.6.0-test11 or newer kernel (I haven't tried older ones) and reboot the system. This happens reliably, 100% of the time.
By the way, this problem does not occur with Red Hat's 2.4 kernels. It seems to be 2.6-specific. See http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=99477 for another report of the same problem.
For me, the issue was resolved by a BIOS upgrade: http://support.ap.dell.com/ap/en/filelib/download/index.asp? fileid=R68080&sid=&os=Windows_NT&searchtype=age FWIW/ Fred
Me too, as it turns out.