Packard Bell EasyNote MZ35 freezes when AC unplugged and wireless on

I've discovered several things: when you're at tty1 when the wireless network is connecting on battery, you'll see a kernel panic turn up when the system crashes. Two important lines I wrote up (because the error messages are not written to disk) are:
EIP: <memory address> rt61pci_config {memory addresses}
Kernel Panic - not syncing: Fatal exception in interrupt

The other is that I'm currently connected to the wireless on battery. I blacklisted the 'rt61pci' kernel module, then rebooted, then unblocklisted that kernel module and loaded it with 'modprobe'. When I had done that I could connect to the network just fine.

Attached in a photograph of my screen showing one full kernel panic and the bottom of another.

I have the same problem on an HP Omnibook 6000 with an RT61 wifi running xubuntu 10.10.

Some additional comments: starting on battery with the wifi modem router off allows the laptop to start and for me to log-in. It goes into panic when the modem router is turned on. Also, I can start on battery with the wifi card removed, allow the system to start and log-in and settle down. Hot plugging the wifi card does not cause a kernel panic (but I don't fancy doing this every time).

Switching off acpi (in grub2) means that the kernel panic problems have gone away. However, I get no battery indicators that work and the laptop has to be manually powered off from the "system halted" message. Turning off acpi is not (I think) a good route to overcoming this problem - it only gives you a lesser set of problems. And acpi was fine on earlier releases of xubuntu.

Further to my previous entry, whilst looking through my box of computer bits looking for something else, I came across an old wifi card an RT2500. I removed my RT61 and inserted the RT2500. I now have no problems with kernel freezes with ACPI on or off.

I am convinced that this is a bug in the RT61 driver.

I confirm similar problem on Dell D600 with RT61 and Ubuntu 10.10, kernel:
Linux version 2.6.35-23-generic (buildd@roseapple) (gcc version 4.4.5 (Ubuntu/Linaro 4.4.4-14ubuntu5) ) #40-Ubuntu SMP Wed Nov 17 22:15:35 UTC 2010 (Ubuntu 2.6.35-23.40-generic 2.6.35.7)

This works for me on a Packard Bell EasyNote MZ35

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/656745/comments/37
It's pm-utils that causes the problem.

I can confirm that the freeze still occurs on Ubuntu 11.04 alpha.

The bug is still present in 11.04

This bug is gone in 11.10, but replaced by a bug that causes the wireless card to often send some data before the authenticated to a protected network is finished. That prevents the laptop from connecting to a wireless network. However, if you try a few times, with a bit of luck it will work in the end.

The occasional, random kernel panics have not gone away. Then the laptop seems to repeat a second or so of visual and audio output continuously. The visual output consists of a part of a kernel panic message.

Sense Egbert Hofstede, thank you for reporting this bug and helping make Ubuntu better. This bug was reported a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering if this is still an issue? Can you try with the latest development release of Ubuntu? ISO CD images are available from http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/ .

If it remains an issue, could you run the following command from a Terminal (Applications->Accessories->Terminal). It will automatically gather and attach updated debug information to this report.

apport-collect -p linux <replace-with-bug-number>

Also, if you could test the latest upstream kernel available that would be great. It will allow additional upstream developers to examine the issue. Refer to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelMainlineBuilds . Once you've tested the upstream kernel, please remove the 'needs-upstream-testing' tag. This can be done by clicking on the yellow pencil icon next to the tag located at the bottom of the bug description and deleting the 'needs-upstream-testing' text. Please let us know your results.

Thanks in advance.

Thank you for responding. I'm currently running the latest version of the current development release of Ubuntu on the laptop and the freezing seems to be gone. Wireless isn't always that reliable, but that might just be cause of the crappy wireless router modems that the ISP provides. I think this bug can finally be considered closed!

Sense Egbert Hofstede, this bug report is being closed due to your last comment regarding this being fixed with an update. For future reference you can manage the status of your own bugs by clicking on the current status in the yellow line and then choosing a new status in the revealed drop down box. You can learn more about bug statuses at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Status. Thank you again for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Please submit any future bugs you may find.