Perhaps I'm just blessed that I don't patronize Dell....but I'm running 4.0 on a few systems and haven't experienced any kernel panics. My advice, like Johnny's, is to update all the bios and various firmwares on crucial controllers. I have to say that I haven't had the best results from LSI SCSI cards in the past so you may want to focus your troubleshooting there. Dell support for Linux has been non-existent/useless for me which is why I don't buy anything from them anymore. Best regards, C