Boot issue screen flashing in Lubuntu 13.10, Mint 16 on xfac

[Carmageddon]

Hello guys!

I have a very old laptop Lenovo Ideapad S10-2 with 1GB ram, it had a working (nearly dead slow) XP installed, used by my mother.

Initially, I tried to install Lubuntu on it, but already on booting from USB drive, had issues of screen flashing rapidly, between logo and boot time text, taking VERY VERY long to load.
In addition I had unresolved Wifi issue - first I had to load the B43 driver manually, and even then had security policy issue - could not save the connection.. doesnt matter.

Upon friend's recommendation, decided to try the Linux Mint
Must say I am surprised, it is much more noob-friendly and offers smooth transition from her XP habits (similar menu).
Only had to install bcmwl-kernel-source for the wifi to work perfectly.

However, the boot issues are practically IDENTICAL!
In Lubuntu:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/n8e8jkqlc4rxf ... 163120.jpg
and https://www.dropbox.com/s/ld5cx98l0eash ... 191618.jpg

In Mint:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/68f0uoz83r0io ... 091323.jpg


There are other minor issues, like long text is showing cut off in xchat forcing me to copy/paste the line to notepad to read fully, etc.. but the major issue is the boot time.
A friend says dmesg prefix is the timestamp in seconds since boot - if so, it scrolls up to 1440 seconds!
Please help me with this, I dont have many alternatives for this laptop, especially that in Mint, I got the wifi working.
It is either stuck, or takes absurdly long time to boot up, I will post the DMESG log from the laptop in a few moments.

[Carmageddon]

The DMESG log:
http://dpaste.com/1738954/

[Carmageddon]

Things found:
https://lkml.org/lkml/2013/5/29/640 suggesting to modify and recompile the kernel - no instructions, and recommendation is not to try this...

http://x86vmm.blogspot.nl/2005/10/linux ... dware.html - I tried doing GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet console=tty1 nmi_watchdog=0" and update-grub - over 20 mins and still flashing screen, without accompanying text this time... ctrl-alt-delete seems to be working, so system is not fully stuck.
After a few times the system booted in like 545 seconds, looking at dmesg, I dont see similar NMI warnings anymore, but I see a SWAP related line:
[ 537.917251] Adding 1037308k swap on /dev/sda5. Priority: -1 extents: 1 across: 1037308k FS

[Carmageddon]

update:
new dmesg is here:
http://dpaste.com/1739499/

I now have:
cat /proc/sys/net/ipv6/conf/all/disable_ipv6 showing 1, SWAP disabled,
/etc/default/grub:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="nmi_watchdog=0"

One of the boot attempts: https://www.dropbox.com/s/nv5y9tf6wjb6a ... 163135.jpg

I am running out of ideas... please help!!

[Carmageddon]

I tried grub with acpi=noacpi, acpi=noirq and still the same issue.
However, I discovered when I (mistakenly) press fn-alt-del (instead of ctrl) repeatedly during black screen, I see some dmesg log running for a split second.
One of those times the laptop managed to boot!

Looking at the dmesg, I see Stack and call traces!
Please, can anyone look into it? http://pastebin.com/Ls2mN4Ts

So, I think we can rule out SWAP, ACPI altogether, perhaps even ipv6 as the cause.

One notable section except the stacks in dmesg:

Code: Select all

[   14.878867] Code: c1 4c 89 4d e8 8d 7c 02 10 e8 cf 84 b9 ff 8b 4d e8 89 45 ec 89 f0 89 55 f0 89 da ff 57 44 89 c7 e8 b8 84 b9 ff 89 c1 89 d3 fb 90 <8d> 74 26 00 8b 45 ec 8b 55 f0 29 c1 19 d3 89 c8 89 da e8 1b c1
[   64.056814] CPU: 0 PID: 0 Comm: swapper/0 Tainted: GF            3.11.0-12-generic #19-Ubuntu

Any thoughts?
I still did not try pci=noacpi, noacpi and ipv6.disable=1 in addition to the sysctl.conf setting....

[Carmageddon]

ok, I found out something! if I go into Recovery boot in Grub, and then choose Resume - the system loads very fast and without issues that I can see!! what could it be? bad video drivers?