No longer ACPI complient.............WHY?

I got this program called "Intervideo Windvd Suite" with my new Asus A8N32 Mobo. My system was running fine, no problems. Had been running for several weeks and playing BF2 and FEAR XP with nary a hiccup. Then I loaded this program, re-booted, or tried to, and I get this BSOD telling me that my bios is not ACPI complient. I cannot get into the system by any means including safe mode. Is there any way to salvage this boondogle?

 

Can you get into your BIOS? There should be an option for ACPI there.

 

Did that Bill, I turned off the ACPI complience under bios, but 'puter wouldn't boot at all, only started to load drivers and locked up. I have 2 hdd's and I have booted into the second drive under Admin, and I have found the Intervideo folder, but there is no uninstall routine built in. Now what? Is there a way to get into the registry on this drive?

 

Also, the hdd no longer shows up in the bios, it's gone. Only the 2nd drive is listed. The master boot record is gone, maybe?

 

Turn it back on!
Sounds like the old disk died, if it's not found by the bios, and that could have caused the original problem.

 

I did turn it back on. I always load a bootable copy of windows on all hdd's, so I can boot into the 2nd hdd ok, tho a lot of the drivers are missing. The bios does not see the drive, but I can go into My Computer and see the drive, even access it and move files around, so the drive is not dead, just not bootable.

 

If your second drive is a clone of the first, you can clone it back and perhaps get the first drive bootable again. Good program for doing that and repairing the MBR and boot sector at the same time is the freeware version of XXCLONE. It has bailed me out many times. I run a clone for backups like you and keep it current, just for times like this.

Edit: Even if it isn't an exact clone and you don't want to lose the data involved, XXCLONE can do the MBR and bootsector repair without doing a cloning operation. That may be the way to go for you.

I do have some doubts however since you say the HDD isn't showing up in the BIOS. Still, it's worth a shot.

Good luck.

 

ACPI BSOD gone, hdd woes remain.

Regretably, there are no clones. Both drives are sata, so switching drives is easy, I just set the 200 as my boot drive, tho it doesn't have all the drivers loaded.(sound, etc.) My C drive was/is a 74GB, my 2nd drive a 200 GB. the 200 is now my boot drive, but I can access the 74, even tho it doesn't show in the bios. Strange to me. I am at a loss as how to get out of this mess. There is no longer a BSOD telling me I am not ACPI complient 'cause the hdd that was giving it is being ignored in the boot cycle. BTW, both drives are FAT32, not NTFS.

 

Not having ever seen this proggie (and I just DL'ed it) can you give me some idea as to how to go about it, or is it fairly obvious?

 

It's pretty friendly but here's the what for you:

Open the program and click on the ADV Setup button > tag the boxes labeled "Write MBR" and "Write Boot Sector" > click on Close Adv. > tag the box labeled "Repair the volume to be bootable" > select the proper volume in the "Target Volume" window > click Start and away you go.

There is a built in warning and escape screen for cloning but you aren't doing cloning so you won't be in danger of copying over any data. When cloning it is very important to verify that the drives selected are the one you intend to manipulate. That's why the radio button is included to bring up the Disk Manager applet of XP so that you can be sure. That's the only pitfall I know of but that always applies to any cloning operation. I consider this software safe for the average user.

HTH

 

In the version of XXClone I DL'd, "Write MBR ", and "Write Boot Sector" are under the Cool Tools tab. And I did that. Now the bios recognizes the 74GB hdd, but when I try to boot to that drive again, the BSOD is back telling me that I'm not ACPI compliant again....RATS!!!!!! Back where I started.
Oh woe is me!

 

Perhaps it's time to reset the BIOS to default values. If there is no option in the menu, then pull the battery for a few moments.

Beyond that, it may be time to consider flashing the BIOS if the manufacturer offers the tool.

I can't rule out some obscure HDD problem but given the error message wording, it sure seems like a BIOS issue. The fact that XXCLONE was also able to recognize the drive gives me reason to believe the drive is healthy but the BIOS isn't able to pick it up.

 

Glad surferdude picked this thread up. What I said applies only to PATA, not SATA drives. However, I'd stop shuffling the drives when things settle down.

Agree it's a BIOS problem, and not sure I'd worry if the drive works in windows.
I'd consider upgrading the SATA drivers (if they're separate on the motherboard CD) or the BIOS (as was suggested), if an upgrade for either is available.

 

Seems to me, if the 200GB drive boots ok, no bsod, and the 74GB blue screens only after the proggy I loaded on it, then the program install messed up some thing on the 74GB drive. I need to know how that could happen. It's the same bios for both drives. Imo, theres still something not right with the 74GB drive, not the bios. Does winxp need special drivers for sata drives? I thot only if they were in raid config. Are we missing something here? I have a lot of stuff on that drive, some of which I could transfer over to the 200GB, but would hate to be forced into it.

 

Do it now, or get it onto some other backup, as a DVD Think you're living too dangerously.

SATAs, I think, require drivers whether or not they're configured as raid, but I'm not aware of all mobo's new possibilities (The drivers support a raid chip on the mobo. Plans were afoot to add raid to the bios, but I haven't followed this up). You should check your manual. Installing XP in the presence of SATAs usually requires pressing F6 at the start to let it know, and then loading the drivers from a floppy after most of the CD files load into ROM. If the install was done at a factory, you wouldn't be aware of this.

edit: Error messages need a grain of salt; the programmers can't possibly anticipate all possible errors and even if they could there isn't room on most computers for all possible messages. A message means to me that something is wrong, and just starts my diagnosis. The message can't do the diagnosis (read: 'isn't diagnostic').

 

Ya know, I can reload all that stuff, and save what I need from my archives, but it chaps my butt to not be able to find out why this happened and how to resolve it. I can't understand why one drive boots ok, and the other blue screens. The only thing I did not do is rewrite the Boot.ini file when I rewrote the MBR and Boot sector files. Do you think this might be of any help? I have no idea whats in that .ini file, or whether it ought to messed with.

 

What you have is a parallel installation which is generally used to repair an original installation. Read these articles to see if they help. The first two cover multibooting with several OS and the third covers using a parallel installation.

How to create a multiple-boot system in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306559#

Upgrading an AMD64 Turion Laptop to Windows XP x64 Edition
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/64bit/bowman_05nov07.mspx

Troubleshooting the Startup Process (look for parallel installation)
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/reskit/c29621675.mspx

Windows allows only one system drive per OS. Don't believe you can set up two.

 

You make a good point George about the BIOS working on one drive and not the other. It may turn out that the error message is just a red herring and all the while your real problem is corruption on the HDD.

Boot the XP CD and run the Recovery Console to see it it recognizes the unbootable drive. If so then run some of the available repair commands against this drive. Start with chkdsk /r since that make the most sense. If it finds and "fixes" errors, exit and try booting. We're clutching at straws here but it won't hurt to try these things. If no joy, boot the RC again and try the fixmbr and any others you think may apply.

Then also consider getting the manufacturers diagnostics for that drive to see if it can tell you anything. I'd like to beat this thing to death short of having to wipe and reload it and I know you would too.

 

And now read this please.

 

Hurrah, it's back. not sure what I did, I fiddles with a number of device settings in the bios, ran XXclone , etc. Hooked it back up, booted to XP CD and started to run repair, changed my mind. Changed boot orderto boot hdd, booted right up. Ran CHKDSK, found no errors. It has been booted about 6 times with nary a hiccup. Go figure.
I want to thank you and surferdude2 for being so patient with an old dude like me. I'll be 70 in April and I've been messing with 'puters since early 80's but this new stuff stumps me a lot, never got into programing.
Again, thank you, you guys are great!