S
sinister
On my Compaq Deskpro, Microsoft XP has become unstable 3 times now.
Keyboard and mouse become so sluggish that the only way I can shutdown is by
pulling the plug, and a high-pitch whine is emitted.
The event viewer found that it was an ACPI_ERR_AMLI_ILLEGAL_IO_READ_FATAL
error, as found in this MS KB article:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;en-us;283649
I've read up a little on the problem; sounds like the BIOS isn't ACPI
compliant (per Microsoft). The recommended solution seems to be not to
upgrade the BIOS (the machine is old enough that I doubt there's a new
enough BIOS version anyway), but rather to change the Hardware Abstraction
Layer to the standard one.
Looking at the event long, this event apparently *always* happens at boot up
(twice in succession, almost immediately), but only recently have such
events made my machine unstable. (That doesn't happen after bootup, but
rather hours later.) I suspect that some application is causing the fatal
instability. Is there any way I can figure out what that is, instead of
changing the HAL?
(It's not just my machine; I checked two others in my office, and they have
the same errors on bootup, though possibly not the fatal instabilities.)
I know, the easiest thing would be to get a new machine, but we've had two
thefts, so these old boxes are attractive---the thief isn't interested in
them.
Keyboard and mouse become so sluggish that the only way I can shutdown is by
pulling the plug, and a high-pitch whine is emitted.
The event viewer found that it was an ACPI_ERR_AMLI_ILLEGAL_IO_READ_FATAL
error, as found in this MS KB article:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;en-us;283649
I've read up a little on the problem; sounds like the BIOS isn't ACPI
compliant (per Microsoft). The recommended solution seems to be not to
upgrade the BIOS (the machine is old enough that I doubt there's a new
enough BIOS version anyway), but rather to change the Hardware Abstraction
Layer to the standard one.
Looking at the event long, this event apparently *always* happens at boot up
(twice in succession, almost immediately), but only recently have such
events made my machine unstable. (That doesn't happen after bootup, but
rather hours later.) I suspect that some application is causing the fatal
instability. Is there any way I can figure out what that is, instead of
changing the HAL?
(It's not just my machine; I checked two others in my office, and they have
the same errors on bootup, though possibly not the fatal instabilities.)
I know, the easiest thing would be to get a new machine, but we've had two
thefts, so these old boxes are attractive---the thief isn't interested in
them.