HAL or ACPI Driver differences?

[needlove]

Specifically the differences between, "ACPI Uniprocessor PC" vs "Advanced
Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) PC...

My current setting is "ACPI Uniprocessor PC" because I choose that setting
when making my unattended installation CD for MS Windows XP SP2 Home. There
is only room for one CPU on the mainboard.

The problem is getting a driver/catalyst from ATI to work properly on my
system. I just replace a nVidia 6800GT with an ATI X1950Pro and cannot find
a driver/catalyst that works without some sort of malfunction. The latest
driver/catalyst for my card "7.10" renders direct 3D inoperable the older
ones down to "7.5" have random reboots...no BSOD, just restart.

Anyway, I'm in the process of ruling out possibilities. AGP bus, IRQ 19 does
not share. BIOS is up-to-date and settings are correct. No overclocking on
the card, 66Mhz, 1.5v.

Basically was just wondering if you could explain the difference of the two
HAL drivers mentioned or list a list that does a fair job of it..

I used Driver Cleaner 3 to remove nVidia remnants safely but I'm scared to
use it to remove ATI. For some reason my Silicon Image SATARAID drivers get
removed along with ATI and I have to copy them from a floppy to boot up into
Windows.

And that goes for changing the HAL driver as well. If I remember correctly
from the last time my drives were inoperable after changing HAL but I had
saved the old HAL and replaced it.

 

[Paul]

Specifically the differences between, "ACPI Uniprocessor PC" vs "Advanced
Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) PC...

My current setting is "ACPI Uniprocessor PC" because I choose that setting
when making my unattended installation CD for MS Windows XP SP2 Home. There
is only room for one CPU on the mainboard.

The problem is getting a driver/catalyst from ATI to work properly on my
system. I just replace a nVidia 6800GT with an ATI X1950Pro and cannot find
a driver/catalyst that works without some sort of malfunction. The latest
driver/catalyst for my card "7.10" renders direct 3D inoperable the older
ones down to "7.5" have random reboots...no BSOD, just restart.

Anyway, I'm in the process of ruling out possibilities. AGP bus, IRQ 19 does
not share. BIOS is up-to-date and settings are correct. No overclocking on
the card, 66Mhz, 1.5v.

Basically was just wondering if you could explain the difference of the two
HAL drivers mentioned or list a list that does a fair job of it..

I used Driver Cleaner 3 to remove nVidia remnants safely but I'm scared to
use it to remove ATI. For some reason my Silicon Image SATARAID drivers get
removed along with ATI and I have to copy them from a floppy to boot up into
Windows.

And that goes for changing the HAL driver as well. If I remember correctly
from the last time my drives were inoperable after changing HAL but I had
saved the old HAL and replaced it.

You can see some options here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/309283/

ACPI is Advanced Configuration & Power Interface. See www.acpi.info for
more information, or this wikipedia article.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acpi

PIC and APIC, have to do with how interrupts are handled. APIC is the
more modern version, with features for steering interrupts to a particular
processor (in a multicore single socket processor, or on a multi socket
motherboard). On my motherboards, PIC seems to offer 16 interrupts, while APIC has
more. APIC allows interrupts to be steered to a processor, "on the fly".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apic

PIC - http://www.lgsee.com/gallery/2007/8259Cascading.png
APIC - http://www.lgsee.com/gallery/2007/APIC.png

"Key Benefits of the I/O APIC"
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/sysperf/IO-APIC.mspx

You can see in the MS KB 309283 article, that there are combinations of
the features, as part of the HAL choice. Making some HAL changes, are easier
than others. For example, transitioning between "ACPI Multiprocessor PC"
and "ACPI Uniprocessor PC" is easy (I think I've done that one). For
other possible transitions, there may be some interaction between how
your BIOS is set up. (For example, whether PIC or APIC is enabled.) I
don't understand this stuff well enough, to suggest exactly what
transitions and/or BIOS changes, would work.

I've read somewhere, that if you have "Standard PC", you're basically stuck,
and need to reinstall, to use one of the other options. But your current
HAL has ACPI, so perhaps the other changes needed to move between
HALs, wouldn't be quite as tough.

I don't see exactly, how your "ACPI Uniprocessor PC" is a bad choice.
If you have an AthlonXP or an Athlon64 (not X2), it sounds like a
reasonable choice. If you have a P4 with Hyperthreading, or an
Athlon64 X2 dual core, or other dual or quad core chips, then I'd
probably want "ACPI Multiprocessor PC" for that.

So the first question is, what kind of processor have you got ?
If it supports Hyperthreading (a P4), is Hyperthreading enabled
in the BIOS ?

Paul

 

[needlove]

NO Hypertransport or anything fancy as that just a Athlon XP Mobile running
at 2450 MHz, liquid cooled, on an nforce 2 motherboard, Abit NF-S ver2. The
CPU has been running like this for a couple years @ 7.5 volts and I just
added a new hard copper fan cooler unit to the northbridge..PS is a TT 560w
with 22 amps on the 12v rail. Its possible that his is not enough amps as
the 1950pro requiers 2 12 v plugins and I have everything on one outlet in
my trailer560 watt PSU plus my monitor and speakers...even that outlet is on
a 15 amp braker... but here are some ATI errors that are universal and you
can google them if you wish. They occur just before a reboot...lets just
post one for funs sake they are lengthy... this is the final before
rebooting while playing MS flight simulator 2004:

Event Type: Information
Event Source: ACEEventLogSource
Event Category: None
Event ID: 0
Date: 10/19/2007
Time: 9:36:11 AM
User: N/A
Computer: HAWKEYE
Description:
0000000003: 2007-10-19 09:36:11:109 Exception <Load>: Could not load file
or assembly 'file:///C:\Branding.dll' or one of its dependencies. The system
cannot find the file specified.
Exception Called by:
ATI.ACE.LOG.Foundation.Implementation.Branding::LoadBrandingResource
processID:01956 threadIDCCCThreadNew:Systemtray)
) assemblyNameLOG.Foundation.Implementation,
Version=2.0.2693.37136, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=90ba9c70f846762e)

Yea..that the last of three that show up before reboot when using
MSFS2004...I know its an ATI problem if my ACPI is ok....gonna check the
rest of the links you gave....may take a day or two. TY

 

[Paul]

NO Hypertransport or anything fancy as that just a Athlon XP Mobile running
at 2450 MHz, liquid cooled, on an nforce 2 motherboard, Abit NF-S ver2. The
CPU has been running like this for a couple years @ 7.5 volts and I just
added a new hard copper fan cooler unit to the northbridge..PS is a TT 560w
with 22 amps on the 12v rail. Its possible that his is not enough amps as
the 1950pro requiers 2 12 v plugins and I have everything on one outlet in
my trailer560 watt PSU plus my monitor and speakers...even that outlet is on
a 15 amp braker... but here are some ATI errors that are universal and you
can google them if you wish. They occur just before a reboot...lets just
post one for funs sake they are lengthy... this is the final before
rebooting while playing MS flight simulator 2004:

Event Type: Information
Event Source: ACEEventLogSource
Event Category: None
Event ID: 0
Date: 10/19/2007
Time: 9:36:11 AM
User: N/A
Computer: HAWKEYE
Description:
0000000003: 2007-10-19 09:36:11:109 Exception <Load>: Could not load file
or assembly 'file:///C:\Branding.dll' or one of its dependencies. The system
cannot find the file specified.
Exception Called by:
ATI.ACE.LOG.Foundation.Implementation.Branding::LoadBrandingResource
processID:01956 threadIDCCCThreadNew:Systemtray)
) assemblyNameLOG.Foundation.Implementation,
Version=2.0.2693.37136, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=90ba9c70f846762e)

Yea..that the last of three that show up before reboot when using
MSFS2004...I know its an ATI problem if my ACPI is ok....gonna check the
rest of the links you gave....may take a day or two. TY

So then "ACPI Uniprocessor PC" is fine for that hardware. You have a
Uniprocessor, no Hyperthreading or anything, so that is the correct HAL.

I was thinking about power being an issue, but the fact that you only
get ATI errors is suspicious. And I don't recollect ever seeing any
complaints about the AGP slot on Nforce2 boards, so would not
suspect the AGP bus was at fault.

For power, the X1950 Pro is measured here.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/x1950pro-gf7900gs_6.html

The numbers here are probably for the PCI Express version of the card,
so for the AGP version, the 12V might all be coming through the aux
connectors. The Rialto bridge would add a few watts more to the 65W
figure quoted here. I would say that in your rig, 60W would come from
the 12V rail, which is 5 amps of load. A 12V 22A supply should not be
bothered about a tiny load like that As for the processor power,
if it came from 12V also, then that would be another 5.5A max. (My
Athlon board runs off the 5V rail, and

http://www.xbitlabs.com/images/video/x1950pro-gf7900gs/1950pro_pwr_full.gif

I see the 2x2 ATX12V connector here, so that means your processor load
will be on the 12V rail as well. So the video card, plus the processor,
would be about 12V @ 10.5 or 11A. Unless you have a ton of disks, it
should not be a power problem.

Things to try:

1) Orthos. This is a quick and dirty way to run the Prime95 torture test.
The program will allocate a large chunk of RAM and start testing.
On my 1GB of memory, the program allocates about 700MB. I use the
blended test. This program will stop when it detects an error. No
errors are acceptable. And for a quick test, I would want this to
run for four hours or so.

http://sp2004.fre3.com/beta/beta2.htm

2) Disable APIC (that is the interrupt controller) in the BIOS. It will
run PIC instead (INTs 0..15). That is recommended for running Linux on
Nforce2 (they use the "noapic" option on the boot command line).
Disabling APIC is also suggested to fix the "time keeping"
bug, that affected Windows users. It didn't seem to bother me, and
the results are inconsistent (some users have problems and some
don't).

3) Go to the ATI driver download page. There are two options for
Catalyst drivers. One option, consists of a driver plus CCC (Catalyst
Control Center). The second option, consists of just the driver.
Try downloading both of those options. You have the one with CCC
already, so all you need, is to get the driver only version.
Uninstall the one with CCC, then install the "driver-only" one.
My idea here, is to get rid of CCC, and see if you can run the
flight sim with just the driver. My recollection, from having done
something like this before, is you may be able to set the monitor
display resolution, using the Windows Display control panel,
but would lose all the custom options that CCC gives. But that
might be one way to get around CCC related errors.

Report back what you find.

HTH,
Paul

 

[needlove]

Will do and TY

So then "ACPI Uniprocessor PC" is fine for that hardware. You have a
Uniprocessor, no Hyperthreading or anything, so that is the correct HAL.

I was thinking about power being an issue, but the fact that you only
get ATI errors is suspicious. And I don't recollect ever seeing any
complaints about the AGP slot on Nforce2 boards, so would not
suspect the AGP bus was at fault.

For power, the X1950 Pro is measured here.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/x1950pro-gf7900gs_6.html

The numbers here are probably for the PCI Express version of the card,
so for the AGP version, the 12V might all be coming through the aux
connectors. The Rialto bridge would add a few watts more to the 65W
figure quoted here. I would say that in your rig, 60W would come from
the 12V rail, which is 5 amps of load. A 12V 22A supply should not be
bothered about a tiny load like that As for the processor power,
if it came from 12V also, then that would be another 5.5A max. (My
Athlon board runs off the 5V rail, and

http://www.xbitlabs.com/images/video/x1950pro-gf7900gs/1950pro_pwr_full.gif

I see the 2x2 ATX12V connector here, so that means your processor load
will be on the 12V rail as well. So the video card, plus the processor,
would be about 12V @ 10.5 or 11A. Unless you have a ton of disks, it
should not be a power problem.

Things to try:

1) Orthos. This is a quick and dirty way to run the Prime95 torture test.
The program will allocate a large chunk of RAM and start testing.
On my 1GB of memory, the program allocates about 700MB. I use the
blended test. This program will stop when it detects an error. No
errors are acceptable. And for a quick test, I would want this to
run for four hours or so.

http://sp2004.fre3.com/beta/beta2.htm

2) Disable APIC (that is the interrupt controller) in the BIOS. It will
run PIC instead (INTs 0..15). That is recommended for running Linux on
Nforce2 (they use the "noapic" option on the boot command line).
Disabling APIC is also suggested to fix the "time keeping"
bug, that affected Windows users. It didn't seem to bother me, and
the results are inconsistent (some users have problems and some
don't).

3) Go to the ATI driver download page. There are two options for
Catalyst drivers. One option, consists of a driver plus CCC (Catalyst
Control Center). The second option, consists of just the driver.
Try downloading both of those options. You have the one with CCC
already, so all you need, is to get the driver only version.
Uninstall the one with CCC, then install the "driver-only" one.
My idea here, is to get rid of CCC, and see if you can run the
flight sim with just the driver. My recollection, from having done
something like this before, is you may be able to set the monitor
display resolution, using the Windows Display control panel,
but would lose all the custom options that CCC gives. But that
might be one way to get around CCC related errors.

Report back what you find.

HTH,
Paul

 

[needlove]

i will report back but so many variables exist that ATI should sleep well
tonight
]

 

[needlove]

how do you take back a drunken post? He He. I ran the GO-ORTHOS test for two
hours: No errors, and temp variation between case and CPU didn't exeed that
of crunching for seti at home. Seti at home has been my overclocking monitor
for a long time. Its the first thing to baulk at corrupt data.
I have checked the links you provided for ACPI and didn't find anything that
details the differences between "ACPI Uniprocessor PC" and "Advanced
Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) PC". Certainly interesting reading
though. I think you right though that there ought to be little impact if one
were to switch between the two. Just to be safe I would save what I need and
copy current HAL to floppy.

All this... just to see if it makes a difference with how the ATI
driver/catalyst installs and works. it won't make a difference but then I
will "know" that.

i will report back but so many variables exist that ATI should sleep well
tonight
]

Will do and TY