ACPI Compliant

W

Willy

I've an HP XE793 PC that has Win ME on it. I'm attempting to upgrade to Win
XP but after it goes through copying the XP installation files and auto
reboots to install XP, a blue screen comes up telling me the PC has been
shutdown to protect it cause the BIOS is not ACPI Compliant. And to
contact vendor for updated BIOS of which they have none.
I search for a KB article
(http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;314830&Product=winx
p ) on this and found one that says:
"RESOLUTION
To resolve this behavior, contact the manufacturer of your computer to
obtain a BIOS that is fully ACPI compliant.

To work around this behavior, manually install the Standard PC hardware
abstraction layer (HAL):
1.. Restart the computer to restart Setup.
2.. When Setup starts again, press F7 (not F6) when you see the "Press F6
if you need to install a third-party SCSI or RAID driver" screen.
Windows automatically disables the installation of the ACPI HAL and installs
the Standard PC HAL. "

This is where I'm confused as I never see a press F6 in setup. I can get
into BIOS by pressing F1 during startup. Any ideas to help or un-confuse
me?
 
V

*Vanguard*

Willy said:
I've an HP XE793 PC that has Win ME on it. I'm attempting to upgrade
to Win XP but after it goes through copying the XP installation files
and auto reboots to install XP, a blue screen comes up telling me the
PC has been shutdown to protect it cause the BIOS is not ACPI
Compliant. And to contact vendor for updated BIOS of which they have
none.
I search for a KB article
(http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;314830&Product=
winx
p ) on this and found one that says:
"RESOLUTION
To resolve this behavior, contact the manufacturer of your computer to
obtain a BIOS that is fully ACPI compliant.

To work around this behavior, manually install the Standard PC
hardware abstraction layer (HAL):
1.. Restart the computer to restart Setup.
2.. When Setup starts again, press F7 (not F6) when you see the
"Press F6 if you need to install a third-party SCSI or RAID driver"
screen.
Windows automatically disables the installation of the ACPI HAL and
installs the Standard PC HAL. "

This is where I'm confused as I never see a press F6 in setup. I
can get into BIOS by pressing F1 during startup. Any ideas to help
or un-confuse me?

Check your BIOS settings. One of them selects whether to use ACPI or
the older APM.

F6 is noted under the first setup screen at the bottom of the screen.
You have to hit F6 during the few seconds that the message appears, and
then a long time later you are prompted to insert a floppy with the
SCSI/SATA/altIDE drivers. If your motherboard is old and not fully ACPI
compliant, you will have to get a flash update for your BIOS from the
maker of your motherboard or switch the BIOS to specify using APM (but
you will lose features like Hibernate mode). http://snipurl.com/89n3
describes how to do a BIOS update for HP computers but you'll have to
check if they have one for your model (I saw 2 versions of BIOS updates
there for your model).
 
V

*Vanguard*

Willy said:
Pressing F7 got it. It's working great. Could find no BIOS upgrades
at the link you referenced.

Under the section titled, "Checking for BIOS Updates", there is a link
to "Find Software". Enter your model number and select the OS. Bingo,
version 2.11 and 3.07 are listed.
 
W

Willy

Now will installing this BIOS upgrade get it ACPI Compliant since I've
pressed the F7 as noted earlier which disables the installation of the ACPI
HAL and installs the Standard PC HAL?
 
V

*Vanguard*

Willy said:
Now will installing this BIOS upgrade get it ACPI Compliant since I've
pressed the F7 as noted earlier which disables the installation of
the ACPI HAL and installs the Standard PC HAL?

If your BIOS doesn't support ACPI or was set to use APM during the
install of Windows, and if pressing F7 resulted in installing the
standard HAL (hardware abstraction layer), and that is what you want to
stick with then you don't have to flash the BIOS to be ACPI compliant
(and doing so might screw you up if the BIOS then defaults to ACPI
instead of sticking with APM while you have the non-ACPI HAL already
installed). I believe the standard HAL will still work okay on an
ACPI-enabled host. You just don't get the extra features of ACPI.

If you want to switch from using the standard HAL to using the ACPI HAL,
flash the BIOS to make it ACPI capable, make sure the BIOS is configured
to enable ACPI, and follow http://support.microsoft.com/?id=299340 and
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=315341 (method 2).
 
W

Willy

I've upgraded the BIOS to 3.07. Are you saying since I installed XP in a
non-ACPI mode, I need to reinstall/repair it so it can take advantage of the
ACPI now. Hibernate & Standby don't function now, I would assume cause I
installed XP with pressing the F7 key.
 
V

_Vanguard_

Willy said:
I've upgraded the BIOS to 3.07. Are you saying since I installed XP
in a non-ACPI mode, I need to reinstall/repair it so it can take
advantage of the ACPI now. Hibernate & Standby don't function now, I
would assume cause I installed XP with pressing the F7 key.

The HAL (hardware abstraction layer) that gets used is the one that got
installed when you installed Windows XP. Typically you get the HAL
based on the install's detection of ACPI and computer type, but you can
override that by picking a different HAL. Did you let the install
choose which HAL to use (which might've been the Standard HAL because
your BIOS didn't support ACPI), or did you manually select a different
HAL during the install? If you let the install, upgrade, or
reinstall/repair pick the HAL, it picks it according to computer type
and BIOS features. The reinstall mentioned in my prior post would let
the reinstall/repair do the auto-select of the HAL, and since the flash
now supposedly made it an ACPI-compliant computer then the
reinstall/repair should pick to install and use the ACPI HAL. Do you
know that the BIOS update actually adds ACPI functionality to it?

How to force a Hardware Abstraction Layer during an upgrade or an
installation of Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=299340
 
W

Willy

I did a re-install of XP after the upgrade to the new BIOS. I tried to use
the Method 2 you recommended to repair but it just froze on pressing R so
after a couple failures I pressed Enter as described in Method 2 and then it
offered a Repair function. So MSs instructions at that link were messed up.
However I finally got it and appears ACPI is functional. Appreciate you
walking me through this solution.
 
V

_Vanguard_

Willy said:
I did a re-install of XP after the upgrade to the new BIOS. I tried
to use the Method 2 you recommended to repair but it just froze on
pressing R so after a couple failures I pressed Enter as described in
Method 2 and then it offered a Repair function. So MSs instructions
at that link were messed up. However I finally got it and appears
ACPI is functional. Appreciate you walking me through this solution.

As I recall, the steps in method 2 are incorrect. In fact, and if I
remember correctly, it tells you to select Repair - but there may be 2
of them! The first "Repair" may actually be nothing more than a boot
into Recovery Console mode, while the second Repair is the actuall
reinstall (aka in-place upgrade).

Glad you got it working finally.
 

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