I seem to recall that one of the differences between AMD and Intel virtualization is that AMD chips have additional memory management capabilities that are specific to virtualization on the CPU chip, where Intel processors require additional support circuitry. The fact that your problems surface when you're running xen suggests that possibly the additional support isn't functioning correctly. Is it possible that there's some obfuscated BIOS setting that's necessary to enable it, or that it's just not present on the motherboard?
Dave
Hi Dave,
My experience & knowledge of AMD is limited, so I stick to what I know, Intel. The only setting I know of in the BIOS related to virtualization is Intel's VT - which is enabled. But even when it was disabled I had the problem. I only enabled it last week to see if I could install FreeBSD as a fully virtualized guest.