Comment 72 for bug 204996

I've been looking around online for another report of the same issue and I've found a thread on the Archlinux forums at http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=43932&p=1 (sorry, can't do a hyperlink) that seems to describe the exact same problem with the 2.6.24 kernel.
One person mentions running glxgears will cause the problem (anyone want to try that?).

Another says, "To me it seems to be a IRQ issue. Maybe a BIOS update is needed. I use ndiswrapper and wicd for network connectivity. The freezes last between 30 secs and 5 minutes but always comes back. It happens even on console (without X) so it is either an IRQ issue or a kernel driver problem."

The final post says, "I've been experiencing the same problem too, but just the other day I tried turning off the shadow memory in BIOS, and the system got back to "normal" state. No more freezes (for a whole day, yay!). Hope, this helps."

Anyone know about shadow memory? "Hope this helps."

--Noah