USB sticks not accessible & system hangs at shut-down: related to older hardware?

Solution 1:

Since you are using a single core processor, I believe you should NOT be using the forcepae option.

The standard Lubuntu installation uses a non-pae kernel and pentimum M processors ARE pae capable, however, the non-pae kernel is also a non-SMP kernel. Having an SMP kernel on a single core system will slow you down, hence you have the error for "Tainted: G S" here Installing Lubuntu 14.04.1 fails, upowerd appears to hang.

G = all modules are GPL licenced (no big deal)

S = occurred on an SMP kernel running on hardware that hasn't been certified as safe to run multiprocessor

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingKernelOops

if you do not have multiple processors, the additional code in an SMP kernel will only slow you down

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Kernel#SMP

The problem with a pae kernel on a pentimu m processor is not pae capability, it's the fact that a single core processor shouldn't run on a kernel that is SMP.