From: timothy parkinson Seems like a lot of people see the below error message, but aren't quite sure why it happens or how to fix it. I sure didn't. Here's my attempt at remedying that. --- arch/i386/kernel/timers/timer_tsc.c | 10 +++++++--- 1 files changed, 7 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-) diff -puN arch/i386/kernel/timers/timer_tsc.c~fancy-lost-ticks-message arch/i386/kernel/timers/timer_tsc.c --- 25/arch/i386/kernel/timers/timer_tsc.c~fancy-lost-ticks-message 2004-01-24 14:10:27.000000000 -0800 +++ 25-akpm/arch/i386/kernel/timers/timer_tsc.c 2004-01-24 14:10:27.000000000 -0800 @@ -232,9 +232,13 @@ static void mark_offset_tsc(void) /* sanity check to ensure we're not always losing ticks */ if (lost_count++ > 100) { printk(KERN_WARNING "Losing too many ticks!\n"); - printk(KERN_WARNING "TSC cannot be used as a timesource." - " (Are you running with SpeedStep?)\n"); - printk(KERN_WARNING "Falling back to a sane timesource.\n"); + printk(KERN_WARNING "TSC cannot be used as a timesource. "); + printk(KERN_WARNING "Possible reasons for this are:\n"); + printk(KERN_WARNING " You're running with Speedstep,\n"); + printk(KERN_WARNING " You don't have DMA enabled for your hard disk (see hdparm),\n"); + printk(KERN_WARNING " Incorrect TSC synchronization on an SMP system (see dmesg).\n"); + printk(KERN_WARNING "Falling back to a sane timesource now.\n"); + clock_fallback(); } } else _