After installing Ubuntu 7.10 server in a VMWare Server virtual machine on any non-PAE compliant machine (lots of laptops, anyone?) you'll reboot and be greeted with this wonderful error message: PANIC: CPU too old for this kernel. There is a solution in launchpad.net (here) The current workaround for this: 1. Boot the server from the CD, choose to ‘Rescue a broken system’. 2. Get a shell in your i