These are work-arounds provided by Microsoft to allow Windows to work on machines which have errors or other faults in the BIOS - although I'm not sure about the "Block Setup on these machines" section.
Linux has options which are similar to these such as -noapic or -acpi=off etc.
/ 
![[Image: AndrewsStyle.png]](http://web2live.org/36/AndrewsStyle.png)
