All, I installed 2.4.0 prerelease and the problem I was seeing w/ kernel: "seemingly random characters" went away. So it would appear that this is a 2.2 problem only. One thing I noticed in going to 2.4 was that my sound card initialization/parameters were/are not available to be set in either xconfig or menuconfig. I read thru Documentation/Changes and didn't see anything relevant. I have a no-name half MSS/half SB sound card; but it did work flawlessly w/ 2.2. The boot messages indicate that the parameters must be set (I don't remember the actual message; I can follow up if necessary). I'm sure there is something I am missing; I just can't see it. original message titled 2.2.1x unknown kernel messages in syslog reference:http://uwsg.ucs.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0012.3/0463.html FYI, Bill - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/