Is it just me or is 10.1 a lot more problematic than the nines were?

Anyway, my new install (lost count of re-installs) displays the message
"disabling IRQ #18"
endlessly. It starts during boot at entering runlevel 5 and never
stops. I don't know if it is related, but the system is to slow to
be usable. I have used earlier releases with this hardware (mostly)
without too much trouble.

p4 with ht
3 hd's, one with SATA
NVIDIA vidio card
640k ram

Any ideas?

Thanks for your input !!