Boot splash broken by "SP5100 TCO timer: mmio address 0xyyyyyyy already in use"

Question

I have ubuntu 11.04 with all the latest updates. I have an ATI HD 4350 graphics card and the "ATI/AMD proprietary FGLRX graphics driver" activated. The reported behaviour does not affect the functionality, its just an optical thing.

When I booted up using the desktop CD, the ubuntu boot splash was shown correctly in high resolution. Now after installation with FGLRX the dipsplay is broken (see picture).

http://img824.imageshack.us/img824/7269/tcotimer.jpg

This is what can be found in dmesg

[    8.621803] SP5100 TCO timer: SP5100 TCO WatchDog Timer Driver v0.01
[    8.621967] SP5100 TCO timer: mmio address 0xfec000f0 already in use
[    8.622650] fglrx: module license 'Proprietary. (C) 2002 - ATI Technologies, Starnberg, GERMANY' taints kernel.
[    8.622656] Disabling lock debugging due to kernel taint

This is what MMIO means: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory-mapped_I/O

Any idea how to get back the high-res splash?

Solution

Looks like a bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/740011

And it was even fixed on the 11th of April.

Launchpad Janitor wrote on 2011-04-11:
This bug was fixed in the package linux - 2.6.38-8.42

Check your kernel version with uname -a

If it is 2.6.38-8.42 it might be a regression so you might add your dmesg log to above bug.

Solution for now: you can blacklist SP5100_tco and the error will be gone. Blacklisting HOW TO: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=166624

Comments

[Admin]

I found this, but not sure how this can help: gossamer-threads.com/lists/linux/kernel/1353469

[mogliii]

Blacklisting did not solve it. I also did an update-initramfs -u. I added myself to the mentioned bug report.

[semitones]

@Rinzwind I'm on 3.2.0-27-generic and I still have this error. This bug report is not completely relevant -- boot is not prevented, the error message just comes up. I would like to know what it means.