When attempting to install Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 on a system with an ATI7000 or 7000M graphics chipset, how do I prevent random freezes, hangs or reboots when the installer GUI attempts to start?

ATI has stated that they have a chipset issue on the 7000/7000M chips. When certain sequences of memory read accesses are made to video memory space and another device on the same PCI bus is accessed during these sequences, the ATI chip will cease responding to further requests. On an Intel© based system, this will result in an IERR. On AMD based systems, this will occur during a machine check. This will typically cause most systems to hang or reboot.

Use the text mode installer to avoid this problem by typing linux text at the isolinux prompt prior to starting the installer. Red Hat expects to correct this problem in a future update.