> So why don't you show us the dmesg > of the most recent kernel that worked for you?
Because I don't see what that has to do with the issue. I'm not looking for that one line that's missing in my current config files. I'm not hoping for someone to tell me that I should include line #5 and then it will work. Instead I was hoping to learn a way how to find out myself which lines must be included (and which in my case don't need to). Quite what Andres Perera explained in his first reply. Just that Adres' explanation obviously cannot be the complete answer or at least I didn't fully understand it. To really get a minimal kernel, I'm going bottom up, not top down. I'm not deleting lines from "GENERIC" but I'm copying lines from GENERIC to an empty file. So there is no "go back one step to where it worked the last time". Though it might be a lot of work, there must be a solution to this issue. > "The npx driver is required for proper system functioning regardless > of whether or not an NPX is present." > > so there's no 1:1 mapping between the devices you have and the ones > you may need included in the kernel config. could potentially apply to > other drivers, so why waste time figuring out which ones fall under > this category and which ones don't? To me it seems like this is the real question that I'm facing: To which drivers does this apply? Anyway, thanks to you all for your patience and attempts to help. Also please understand that it will not help if I explained why there is no way to use GENERIC and why the hardware cannot be changed. That would be a long story which in the end would lead to nothing... except wasting time.