Possible to defeat ACPI?

G

Grand_Poobah

I inherited a computer from family that periodically (read: randomly)
just 'freezes'. By this I mean that the desktop still appears, but
mouse and keyboard response is nil. There is no apparent method of
getting any activity back short of holding down the power button. It is
running Windows XP Pro SP3 with all updates.

Inspecting the Event Log - entries in System show four errors
immediately on boot and right after the Event Log is started. All four
tell me that ACPI has tried to write into protected locations (0xCF8,
0xCFC, 0x70, and 0x71) and that 'system instability may happen'.
Articles on the MS site put forth that CMOS could be out of date but I
checked and mine is the latest one. Other checks they recommend also
showed them to be set to their recommendations (such as having APCI
sleep state set to S1 instead of S3, etc).

No apparent change is made if I select Yes or No to "PNP-Aware OS" in
CMOS. Other changes made in CMOS also appear to have no effect.

Device manager will show (under System Devices - with 'show hidden
devices' checked) an entry for "Microsoft ACPI Compliant System" and the
driver is capable of being uninstalled. Will this actually defeat
ACPI, or will I have to re-install XP Pro and avoid it on the reinstall?

PSU is under-utilized (I am fairly sure of this) because there is only
an AGP video card, and a NIC outside the motherboard. I have unplugged
the two CD/DVD players plus have a hand-held temperature gauge set up on
the CPU heat sink. Most of the time, the CPU sink is cool to the touch.
The fan in the PSU turns quietly and the air moving through it appears
to be warm, but not "hot". Dust has been vacuumed out and the video
card (ATI Rage Fury Pro) is running cool.

I am not totally sure that ACPI is the culprit, but those four errors in
the System log seem a good place to start.

GP
 
K

Ken Blake, MVP

I inherited a computer from family that periodically (read: randomly)
just 'freezes'. By this I mean that the desktop still appears, but
mouse and keyboard response is nil. There is no apparent method of
getting any activity back short of holding down the power button. It is
running Windows XP Pro SP3 with all updates.
Click to expand...


If I acquired a used computer, the first thing I would do with it
would be to reinstall the operating system cleanly. You have no idea
how the computer has been maintained, what has been installed
incorrectly, what is missing, what viruses and spyware there may be,
etc. No matter who previously owned it, I wouldn't want to live with
somebody else's mistakes and problems, possibility of kiddy porn,
etc., and I wouldn't recommend that anyone else do either.
 
L

Leonard Grey

It's been said in these newsgroups countless times: The first thing to
do when receiving a used computer is to erase the hard disk and
reinstall the software. That's the only way to be sure that the computer
is free of configuration errors and malware.

If you acquire a used computer without installation discs for the
software, you are only getting half a computer.
 
G

Grand_Poobah

--->
If I acquired a used computer, the first thing I would do with it
would be to reinstall the operating system cleanly. You have no idea
how the computer has been maintained, what has been installed
incorrectly, what is missing, what viruses and spyware there may be,
etc. No matter who previously owned it, I wouldn't want to live with
somebody else's mistakes and problems, possibility of kiddy porn,
etc., and I wouldn't recommend that anyone else do either.
Click to expand...

In this case, family meant within the same household. Since I wasn't
involved as the owner until after I'd already tried several things to
help my wife with the freezing problem. Once she bought a new laptop
and brought the computer home to me I decided to see what the root cause
was.

The computer was used at her job as a church secretary and, as such, was
unlikely to catch anything from the internet as her computer was
isolated from even the local LAN because of sensitive data concerning
church members. All that has been sliced neatly from the hard drive. I
see no need to try and rebuild the operating system from scratch as it
originally was pre-sp2 and the only recovery disks that are available
would leave a lot to be reconstructed.

I do agree that an unknown computer from an unknown source would get the
full cleaning and pressing before use.

GP
 
G

Gerry

Inspecting the Event Log - entries in System show four errors
immediately on boot and right after the Event Log is started. All four
tell me that ACPI has tried to write into protected locations (0xCF8,
0xCFC, 0x70, and 0x71) and that 'system instability may happen'.

Please post the actual reports.

A tip for posting copies of Error Reports! Run Event Viewer and double
click on the error you want to copy. In the window, which appears is a
button resembling two pages. Click the button and close Event
Viewer.Now start your message (email) and do a paste into the body of
the message. Make sure this is the first paste after exiting from
Event Viewer.

--



Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
G

Grand_Poobah

Here they are ( they all occur serially with the same time stamp - to
the second - right after the Event Log gets initialized):

Event Type: Error
Event Source: ACPI
Event Category: None
Event ID: 5
Date: 1/18/2009
Time: 3:15:57 PM
User: N/A
Computer: PRINSERV
Description:
AMLI: ACPI BIOS is attempting to write to an illegal IO port address
(0xcf8), which lies in the 0xcf8 - 0xcff protected address range. This
could lead to system instability. Please contact your system vendor for
technical assistance.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
Data:
0000: 00 00 00 00 04 00 52 00 ......R.
0008: 00 00 00 00 05 00 05 c0 .......À
0010: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0018: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0020: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........

Event Type: Error
Event Source: ACPI
Event Category: None
Event ID: 4
Date: 1/18/2009
Time: 3:15:57 PM
User: N/A
Computer: PRINSERV
Description:
AMLI: ACPI BIOS is attempting to read from an illegal IO port address
(0xcfc), which lies in the 0xcf8 - 0xcff protected address range. This
could lead to system instability. Please contact your system vendor for
technical assistance.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
Data:
0000: 00 00 00 00 04 00 52 00 ......R.
0008: 00 00 00 00 04 00 05 c0 .......À
0010: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0018: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0020: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........

Event Type: Error
Event Source: ACPI
Event Category: None
Event ID: 5
Date: 1/18/2009
Time: 3:15:57 PM
User: N/A
Computer: PRINSERV
Description:
AMLI: ACPI BIOS is attempting to write to an illegal IO port address
(0x70), which lies in the 0x70 - 0x71 protected address range. This
could lead to system instability. Please contact your system vendor for
technical assistance.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
Data:
0000: 00 00 00 00 04 00 52 00 ......R.
0008: 00 00 00 00 05 00 05 c0 .......À
0010: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0018: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0020: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........


Event Type: Error
Event Source: ACPI
Event Category: None
Event ID: 4
Date: 1/18/2009
Time: 3:15:57 PM
User: N/A
Computer: PRINSERV
Description:
AMLI: ACPI BIOS is attempting to read from an illegal IO port address
(0x71), which lies in the 0x70 - 0x71 protected address range. This
could lead to system instability. Please contact your system vendor for
technical assistance.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
Data:
0000: 00 00 00 00 04 00 52 00 ......R.
0008: 00 00 00 00 04 00 05 c0 .......À
0010: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0018: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0020: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........


The Microsoft.com link produces nothing but a blank page under Help and
Support.

GP

--->
 
G

Grand_Poobah

Thanks Gerry. The first two links provided a couple of things to try,
and I had already seen the KB article which suggest many of my attempts
to kill these errors.

The four addresses are broken up into two areas: 1) two attempted writes
into CMOS/NMI Enable, and, 2) two attempts to write into PCI
configuration space. I have tried moving both the PCI cards (NIC &
Modem) into different slots but that didn't help.

My first post mentioned that the CMOS is up to date as far as the
motherboard/chip manufacturers are concerned.

I'm wondering if there is some way to turn it off in XP - possibly some
sort of Registry change.

Of course there is also the possibility I am barking up the wrong tree
too. My GPU could be heating, the CPU ditto, or the PSU could be
putting out a glitch. Once the computer stops responding, I cannot
reach it by PING or any other network method so I believe the entire
computer has simply halted even though the video remains on the screen.

GP

--->
 

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