Forced Abstraction Layer

[William]

In order to get WinXP Pro to recognize my video card correctly I had to
re-format and copy the OS again but I had to pick the type system I had and
I chose ACPI PC which I am 99.9% sure is correct and sure enough it worked,
at least I had a different IRQ assigned to my video card and later ,days,
Win XP allowed me to change from ACPI PC to "Standard PC" which to me seemed
reasonable however now it won't allow me to change back and I sure hate to
re-format and start all over, if I do can some tell 100% what computer I
have. It is 1.5 years old. P-4 2.53 GHz, Giga-byte-850E Chipset MB, 512 MB
Rambus RAM. Thanks.

William

 

[CS]

In order to get WinXP Pro to recognize my video card correctly I had to
re-format and copy the OS again but I had to pick the type system I had and
I chose ACPI PC which I am 99.9% sure is correct and sure enough it worked,
at least I had a different IRQ assigned to my video card and later ,days,
Win XP allowed me to change from ACPI PC to "Standard PC" which to me seemed
reasonable however now it won't allow me to change back and I sure hate to
re-format and start all over, if I do can some tell 100% what computer I
have. It is 1.5 years old. P-4 2.53 GHz, Giga-byte-850E Chipset MB, 512 MB
Rambus RAM. Thanks.

William

You can not change the HAL back to ACPI PC without reinstalling XP.
If you attempt to change without reinstalling, the system will
probably fail to boot and you'll wind up reinstalling anyway.

However, from reading your post, I can see you enjoy making things
extra hard for yourself. Why would you have to reformat XP and
change the HAL in order to get XP to recognize your video card? Also,
when you use the ACPI HAL, IRQs are assigned automatically and if your
device drivers are designed properly, the IRQs will be shared. You
can only change IRQs (sometimes) when using the Standard PC HAL.

I would just go ahead and reinstall XP but let the installation
automatically choose the HAL and set the IRQs. Doesn't matter what
kind of computer you have, XP will attempt to figure it out. Before
reinstalling, go to the Gigabyte web site and download the latest
flash BIOS update for your motherboard and install it. Also make sure
you have the latest drivers for your video card, sound, devices, etc.

 

[Alex Nichol]

I chose ACPI PC which I am 99.9% sure is correct and sure enough it worked,
at least I had a different IRQ assigned to my video card and later ,days,
Win XP allowed me to change from ACPI PC to "Standard PC" which to me seemed
reasonable however now it won't allow me to change back and I sure hate to
re-format and start all over, if I do can some tell 100% what computer I
have. It is 1.5 years old. P-4 2.53 GHz, Giga-byte-850E Chipset MB, 512 MB
Rambus RAM. Thanks.

For such a machine you should normally be using the ACPI HAL. The only
practicable way to swap is in doing a repair reinstall - selecting using
F5 at the point where it says 'Hit F6 to install special drivers'. But
in practical terms there is not that much difference to matter. You may
find that in order, to turn off the machine at shutdown, on a 'standard'
HAL, you need to look for an APM page in Power Options and 'enable APM'