Your system is choking before it gets to anything to do with speech. The APIC is a programmable interrupt controller. Thats the 8259A in your system. The 8254 mentioned is the system timer. It appears that on boot the kernel is trying to register the system timer with the interrupt controller and it's failing. Note what the kernel message states: try booting with the 'noapic' option. This is a kernel parameter. They can be specified at the boot prompt. Suggestion 1: text speakup_synth=ltlk noapic Suggestion 2: Get your girlfriend to boot into BIOS and disable ACPI in the BIOS, save and exit, and boot again. I'm betting that your system uses nvidia nforce on the system chipset. You are not alone with this APIC error. Corey Knapp wrote: > Hi > My girl friend was here and here is what she saw on the screen > > Timer: vector=0x31 apic1=0 Pin1=0 apic2=-1 Pin2=-1 > MP-BIOS bug: 8254 Timer not connected to Io-APIC > Trying to set up timer (IRQ0) Through The 8259A.Failed > Trying to set up timer as Virtual Wire IRQ.Failed > Trying to set up timer as ExtINT IRQ. Failed :( . > Kernel Panic- not syncing: IO- Apic + timer doesn't work! Boot with > apic=debug and send a report. Then try booting with the 'noapic' option. > Thanks in advance. > Corey
