Reboot in Linux doesn't actually reboot

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Now, I have a successfuly MDK9.1 installation on my Compaq 1200z laptop. This laptop has 900MHz Athlon 4 mobile processor, 320MB SDRAM, 30GB harddrive, connexant modem, and connexant NIC.

Booting into linux is not a problem. However, when I used Ctrl-Alt-Del, and also the command reboot to reboot my linux machine, the machine is frozen at the initial boot process where it shows a big red COMPAQ on the screen. I have to completely powerdown the laptop, power it on again for it to boot. The "restart" from win2k works fine all the time.

Now, it is faster for me to powerdown the PC and turn it on using the power-on button than trying the reboot option in linux.

Any suggestions to rectify this problem.

Additional info: During the boot (in lilo.conf) I pass the kernel options acpi=off noapm, which were actually set by the Mandrake installer.

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[nukes]

Is there a BIOS update out for your laptop? I've had a few that required a reflash to get some things working - specificaly power managment. Try commenting out that line in /etc/lilo.conf (or removing those append tags)
Best to make a copy of the entry rather than modify it really though, just in case ACPI doesn't agree with your system.

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I've set acpi=off in my system. However, in the kernel logs I've seen a message "ACPI disabled in BIOS, re-enabling it". I don't know what to do now.

[mksoccer]

I have the same problem with my Compaq Presario desktop, also a 900 Mhz Athlon (I don't think that's a factor, though). Every time the system reboots, whether it's Red Hat or Mandrake, it locks up and I have to power it off completely. I eventually gave up with Linux on the Compaq, because it was too much of a pain booting between OSes when you have to bend over and find the power button every time you switch back to Windows. Anyways, I hope you figure out what the problem is, and please PM me or something to let me know when you do... thanks!

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mksoccer,

Some where on the cyber space (found via GOOGLE search), someone had a similar experience with a Compaq laptop - his laptop did not reboot from Mandrake/Redhat. It seems his problems disappeared after he re-compiled the kernel. I don't know what options he used. I'll give it a try when I have time.
It could be a problem with some of the acpi/apm/... modules.


nukes: There is no bios update. The compaq bios itself is very wierd. It doesn't have any configuration options except for the date, time, and boot preferences.

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Today I observed that the BIOS gives a keyboard error if I leave the machine for a long time at the "COMPAQ" screen -- only after I try to reboot from linux.

Anyone has a solution to this problem