Linux users: Dell Precision M65 not powering off from Linux !!

To be honest that sounds like an ACPI problem with the particular KErnel version in RH. One ugly way to get around it is to add acpi=off into the grub boot configuration. But you will lose a lot of power saving and function keys you may have on the laptop.

acpi=off is something I normally put on RHEL kernel options since it seems to allow system to run more cleanly. If I put acpi=on in the kernel line shutdown will work fine, but it removes one cpu. Not an optimal solution. This is the same issue on RHEL4 and RHEL5. openSuSE doesn't have this issue. More info; removing acpi=on/off and pci=nopci (no kernel appends) seems to work fine, the problem is that /proc/cpuinfo reports the cpu speed to 1GHz instead of 2.16GHz. acpi=off fixes that but also you're back to square one.

Message Edited by SwedishHammer on 07-31-2007 02:12 PM

ok I made some progress. The solution for Linux seems to be turning off speedstep in bios. It will be locked to 2.16 GHz. And don't append any kernel acpi lines in grub.conf. Now it shutdown correctly and shows the correct cpu speed in /proc/cpuinfo. Update 8/3/07 Although Linux may seem to work correctly now. If you use your M65 as a dual boot laptops with Windows XP or Vista, speed step should not be turned off. Using Intel's cpu test utility

The following results can be seen on a Dell M65 with speed step turned off on MS Vista.

Expected CPU 2.16 GHz Bus 667 MHz
Reported Core 1 0.69 GHz, Bus 469 MHz
Core 2 0.69 GHz, Bus 469 MHz

Obviously speedstep means more to Windows then Linux. So these dual boot laptops make it impossible to turn off speedstep.
Back to the drawing board.

Message Edited by SwedishHammer on 08-03-2007 10:58 AM