Comment 28 for bug 223014

Sorry for not digging in deepter into related bugs, but I'll just add a comment hoping to give someone a hit on some keywords.
I had the same problem when installing Ubuntu 8.10 on an SiS 620 Mainboard with Intel Pentium III and P-ATA HDDs (8 and 13 GB). The Kernel option all_generic_ide solved the problem for me (add to kernel line in GRUB boot menu and /boot/grub/menu.lst). Unfortunately I could not find a description of this option online, maybe something in linux-doc can tell what this option does exactly.