Installation of SuSE Linux 7.1 on notebook fails

Support knowledgebase (notebookoops_71)
Applies to

SuSE Linux: Version 7.1
This article refers to an older version of SuSE Linux. Therefore some of the informations given in this article may be outdated or the article may contain stale links.

Symptom:

During the installation of SuSE Linux 7.1 a message like the following appears when the kernel starts: 
apm: BIOS Version 1.2 Flags 0x03 ( Driver version 1.13 )
Unable to handle kernel paging request at virtual address c8c0200
current->tss.cr3=00101000  %cr3=00101000
*pde=07ff1063
*pte=00000000
Oops: 0000
CPU :    0
EIP: 0010:[<c02cf74d>]
EFLAGS: 00010296
eax: 00000002  ebx: c8c02000  ecx: 00000323  edx: 00000071
esi: c8c01000  edi: c8c01000  ebp: 00000001  esp: c7f79eec
ds:  0018      es:  0018      ss:  0018
 
Process swapper (pid:1, process nr: 1, stackpage=c7f79000)
Stack: c02590e5 c7f79f40 00000001 00000086 c00eed30 00000071
       c7f79f40 00000014
       c7f70018 c02cf842 07ff0000 000005ba 00000034 c02cf86c
       c02e159c c02cbfc0
       00000000 0008e000 c02a0920 c02a0920 000f6670 494d445f
       05ba4c5f 07ff0000
 
Call Trace: [<c02590e5>] [<c0125470>] [<c010a2a0>] [<c010616c>]
            [<c0106176>] [<c0108e2f>] [<c0108e38>
 
Code: 80 3b 00 75 fa 80 7b 01 00 75 f4 83 c3 02 89 c5 3b 6c 24 38
This happens mostly with the notebooks Fujitsu Lifebook 6530, 6540, 6550.

Cause:

The kernel can't detect the memory correctly.

Solution:

Supply the size of the memory to the kernel at the bootprompt. If you have 64 MB in your notebook, type in the following at the boot:-Prompt: 
linux mem=64M
Keywords: NOTEBOOK, LAPTOP, FUJITSU, LIFEBOOK, 6530, 6540, 6550
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SuSE Linux AG - Last generated: 15. Mär 2001 by mjb (sdb_gen 1.40.0)