ACPI-generated instability with XP Home

[Louis K. Bonham]

I have a persistant instability problem under XP Home.

Periodically (but with frustrating frequency when running
games that use DirectX) the system will lockup and not
accept mouse or keyboard input, either for several seconds
(in which case pressing Esc repeatedly may restore things)
or completely (in which case nothing works, and turning
the power off to force a cold boot is the only solution).
Other times, mouse control will become extremely erratic
(sluggish, jerky, or random). In each case, however, the
program being used continues to run.

The problem appears to stem from the fact that my system
BIOS is not cooperating with WinXP, as I get the following
error messages messages at every bootup:

AMLI: ACPI BIOS is attempting to write to an illegal IO
port address (0x70), which lies in the 0x70-0x71 protected
addres range. This could lead to system instability.
Please contact your system vendor for assistance.

AMLI: ACPI BIOS is attempting to read from an illegal IO
port address (0x70), which lies in the 0x70-0x71 protected
addres range. This could lead to system instability.
Please contact your system vendor for assistance.

I've searched the message bases, and this problem is
apparently not uncommon for pre-XP systems.
The "official" MicroSoft advice seems to be to get an
updated BIOS from the system mfgr. In this case, however,
the MB maker (SuperMicro) has not updated the AMI BIOS for
this MB (SuperMicro Super 370SSM) since 2001 (I've flashed
my BIOS with the latest version; problem is still there).
Further, the SuperMicro technical support department
informs me that that this MB & BIOS was never tested for
XP-compliance and they have no plans to issue further BIOS
revisions for it.

I've tried disabling power management in the BIOS setup
and have turned off all the power management options on
the XP Control Panel. No dice, problem is still there.

Any ideas? Or am I just outta luck and have to do a MB
transplant?

Louis K. Bonham
Houston, Texas

 

[Alex Nichol]

The problem appears to stem from the fact that my system
BIOS is not cooperating with WinXP, as I get the following
error messages messages at every bootup:

AMLI: ACPI BIOS is attempting to write to an illegal IO
port address (0x70), which lies in the 0x70-0x71 protected
addres range. This could lead to system instability.
Please contact your system vendor for assistance.

I think if you have trouble with ACPI, it is better to do a repair
reinstall, and leave it out - it will not be much missed.

Set the BIOS to boot CD before Hard disk, then boot the XP CD, start
Setup (do not take 'Repair' at this stage), then after the license
agreement take 'Repair Installation'. This will retain your existing
software installations and most settings. But Updates will have to be
run again, especially SP1; note that It is important to activate the
basic XP Firewall before you ever connect to the net to get the
patches, so as to be protected against things like the BLAST worm.

At the first reboot, change the boot order back to Hard disk first. You
will then get a black screen with a white bar - 'Hit F6 to install
special. . . '. Hit F7 instead; nothing will appear to happen, but the
system will install without ACPI. Only thing you would then need is to
go to Power Options - APM and Enable APM so as to support Power off at
shutdown