ACPI or APM causes random shutdowns on Laptop

[jerann]

I've been having a really odd problem with my Toshiba Laptop. If I leave ACPI or APM enabled, my system crashes with no warning whatsoever during long tasks. I get no error messages or warnings, it just shuts itself off. I had this problem a while ago trying to install Gentoo - it kept crashing when I was trying to compile the kernel. I switched to Debian for a while, and it had the same problem - it was then I realized I had to pass acpi=off and noapm to the kernel BOTH - not just one - to stop the problem. I recently reinstalled Gentoo, and I've been having the same problem - I had to pass those arguments for the install CD and even now in the final install. When installing, it crashed every time I tried to untar the Portage tarball. It probably did it 4 or 5 times with me trying various combinations of acpi=off and noapm. What's really strange is that after I compiled my own kernel and booted the system, it crashed while doing an emerge -uND world the exact same way, but I had disabled apm and acpi in my kernel configuration - but when I passed acpi=off and noapm to the kernel, boom - problem fixed. This really prompted a WTF from me, as I'm not sure how those arguments could make a difference if acpi and apm are already disabled. Anyway, I wouldn't mind so much that I have to physically push the power button, but I can't view my battery status this way, which is terribly inconvenient. Also, a certain other operating system whose name I shall not utter here does not have any similar problems. Does anyone have any ideas that might help? Thanks!