on a dual-core Core Duo (aka Centrino Duo) laptop (HP dv8000), booting a cpu kernel either crashes on start up or very soon after with a slight user load if smp is enabled; without smp it works normally. i think it may be the same problem Dan reported a while back:
http://9fans.net/archive/2009/06/45 i don't know if sata is a red herring. this is a recent kernel build (last 3 weeks) and although it has two drives they are not touched (contain Widows partitions); it pxeloads and boots from a kenfs. ideas? -Skip
