Iv got an older system I am going to use as a backend server. Its an ASUS CUR-DLS. When I boot from the R5F27 disk it displays this error about a BIOS bug. Not sure what it means, or what I should do about it. I found a few things about it with google, but nothing much. Is this something that should just report to ASUS?

BIOS Bug, IO-APIC#1 ID 3 is already used!
Fixing up to 1. (tell your hw vendor)

MP-BIOX bug: 8254 timer not connected to IO-APIC

Motherboards typically have 5 pci slots but only 4 irq's for those slots. Typically slots 4 and 5 share an IRQ, but it is possible that other slots share IRQ's. This may or may not be related to your problem. You may try to move cards around, especially to avoid using both slots 4 and 5. If you have an AGP card, it may also be sharing an IRQ with one of the PCI slots.

If you have two of the same kind of PCI card, it may be causing this, especially if they are in slots 4 and 5. ...Perhaps there is a setup utility that would allow you to re-configure one of these cards. I have some old NIC cards that are this way. You need to put one card in the PC at a time and run the configuration program.

You may also try going in to your BIOS and changing "Enable APIC" to see if that helps.

You might consider downloading and installing a new BIOS (save off the old version first), but be very sure that you get a BIOS for that EXACT motherboard or you may ruin it.

also try Google if you haven't already..

Last but not least, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." If the system is working OK, leave it alone unless you like to tinker?

Cliff

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R5F27 using R5F1 Nvidia drivers
HD-5500 analog from NTSC Sat Rx, with OTA DVB too
GeForce MX-440 SVideo tvout to a TV
Older dual core 3.4ghz Intel CPU
Asus P5PE-VM Motherboard
2 GB RAM
1 TB LVM2
VirtualBox
Samba

Its doing this without any PCI cards installed so I am pretty sure its not a IRQ issue. The system still boots, and I can still get KnoppMyth installed without any other issues, but I just was not sure what problems this bug could cause.

Iv already tried the latest BIOS, and even the beta BIOS they have avaliable.

Personally I would subscribe to Cliff's "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." theory. However, see http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Fix_Common_ACPI_Problems for some options/possibilities.