Fix: Dell Laptops and workstations not rebooting ("Restarting System")

Had an interesting if annoying problem recently that I assumed would just fix itself eventually. But when you’re sick of prodding a power button to force a machine to reboot, you gotta do something.

TL;DR_ if you’re getting messages like “Restarting System” on an attempted reboot, try setting the reboot=pci kernel boot flag_

To do this, at the grub boot menu, press e to edit the current boot parameters. Find the line starting with “linux” (this is the line that actually kicks off the linux kernel) and at the end of that line, put “reboot=pci”.

Then boot normally (F10) and try rebooting. It should work this time.

To make the change permanent, add the “reboot=pci” flag to the “GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX” line of /etc/default/grub.

And tada! Reboot problems solved. Please comment on what machines you’ve needed to use this on. This is currently listed as a bug

Sources and Extra Info:

This has affected a lot of people, on Dell Laptops, Desktops, and servers. It appears to be predominantly a 64 bit problem and is not specific to just Ubuntu.

At the time of writing I was on Raring, but had been on Oneric for ages, and even though the listed bug was ‘fix released’, it wasn’t fixed for me. YMMV