Spurious interrupts can be generated by hardware by one of the following reasons:
a) faulty hardware
b) bad driver has enabled the PCI device's hardware interrupt but failed to register an interrupt service routine for that IRQ number
c) bad driver has failed to chain interrupt handlers together for a shared IRQ
d) misbehaving APIC (programmable interrupt controller) routes the PCI device's hardware interrupt to the wrong IRQ
If you get a spurious interrupt then it means a device has been enabled but no software is servicing it properly. You should look for PCI devices that do not work.
To look at the PCI devices, as root (superuser) do
Code:
lspci -v
You might be able to see PCI device(s) that is using IRQ 83.
To look at registered Interrupt handlers do
Code:
cat /proc/interrupts
You should see a list of drivers names in the right-hand column. Are there any drivers listed for IRQ number 83 ? Note that IRQs can be shared between devices.
You could disable the APIC by adding "noapic" to the kernel command line options in /boot/grub/menu.lst. If you know grub then you can try doing it interactively at boot-up.
Look in /var/log/syslog, search for "syslogd" to find the start of a boot up sequence. Is there any mention of IRQ 83 ?
There is a command called "dmesg" that will show some debug information from the kernel, that might help. Best used after the first pop-up is seen after a reboot.
