Activating ACPI without reinstalling XP?

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.general (More info?)

Hello!

I bought a new PC about half a year ago, and I just took the harddisk
with XP pro installed from the old machine and put it in the new one.
Worked surprisingly well.

Well, turns out that old PC didn't support ACPI, and now (on the new
PC) I can't switch to ACPI mode in Device Manager/Computer/Update
Drivers. (The only option available is Standard-PC)

After some googling I found this:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315341/EN-US/

Is there any other way to activate ACPI than performing a complete
re-install? I've seen to many XP installs fail this week to try this on
a running system if there's any other way.
Any Ideas?

Regards,
Martin

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.general (More info?)

You will still need to do a XP repair re-install. Since you have changed
the motherboard, the XP Product Activation will need to be reset so that the
activation can be done. The easiest way is to do a re-install of XP over
top of your installed version. However, if you have SP2 installed, you
should "slipstream" SP2 in order to create a newer XP install CD. If you
have problems in "slipstreaming" SP2, look at the utility 'AutoStreamer'.


<mx.2000@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1126007749.059276.300330@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> Hello!
>
> I bought a new PC about half a year ago, and I just took the harddisk
> with XP pro installed from the old machine and put it in the new one.
> Worked surprisingly well.
>
> Well, turns out that old PC didn't support ACPI, and now (on the new
> PC) I can't switch to ACPI mode in Device Manager/Computer/Update
> Drivers. (The only option available is Standard-PC)
>
> After some googling I found this:
> http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315341/EN-US/
>
> Is there any other way to activate ACPI than performing a complete
> re-install? I've seen to many XP installs fail this week to try this on
> a running system if there's any other way.
> Any Ideas?
>
> Regards,
> Martin
>

 

[frodo]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.general (More info?)

Yves Leclerc <yleclercNOSPAM@maysys.com> wrote:
> You will still need to do a XP repair re-install.

Yup, that's true.

AND, if it's an AMD-based motherboard, be sure to check the bios and make
sure that the APIC option (not ACPI, but APIC) is enabled. [if there is
an APIC option available; this legacy setting is slowly disappearing,
thankfully]. This option controls whether you can have more than 16
levels of interrupt; it must be enabled before the XP setup will install
the ACPI HAL.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.general (More info?)

Thanks for your advice!

I did the reinstall with the slipstreamed CD, didn't cause any trouble.

The HAL has changed, but only to MPS-Uniprocessor-PC, which means that
APIC works but ACPI doesn't (if I am reading this
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;309283
correctly).

It is a Socket939-mainboard (Athlon64), so it should be ACPI-ready. Any
ideas on what caused this failure or where to find out?

Regards,
Martin

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.general (More info?)

> check in MB maker's forum if possible, for sure a socket-939 can be made
> to use the ACPI Hal. The Bios defaults should in-fact be all that's
> necessary really, but that APIC=disabled issue crops up often. And
> validate that your bios is the latest version.
APIC is enabled, I checked that.

> Are you running Cool and Quiet?

No, that's exactly the reason why I stumbled upon this issue. I tried
enabling CnQ, but it didn't work. Then I learned out that CnQ needs
ACPI to run...

I'll give it another reinstallation try tomorrow, without forcing
ACPI-mode for now (this is my main working machine). It would be nice
if there was a way to find out why exactly the setup program didn't
choose the ACPI-HAL.

 

[frodo]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.general (More info?)

mx.2000@gmail.com <mx.2000@gmail.com> wrote:
> The HAL has changed, but only to MPS-Uniprocessor-PC, which means that
> APIC works but ACPI doesn't (if I am reading this
> http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;309283
> correctly).

> It is a Socket939-mainboard (Athlon64), so it should be ACPI-ready. Any
> ideas on what caused this failure or where to find out?

check bios setings for Power Management - return that page to "optimized
defaults". Basically, the OS should do all power management, the bios
should not be set to power down any disks or video.

PnP OS: you can set this to NO for XP.

RAM/ROM/Bios Shadowing: all such options should be set to NO

When all done w/ bios tweaking, clear/reset the PnP Info in the bios.
This makes bios rebuild all the PnP info on the next boot.

[sorry, don't have one of my amd boxes in front of me right now, working
from memory...]

========

check in MB maker's forum if possible, for sure a socket-939 can be made
to use the ACPI Hal. The Bios defaults should in-fact be all that's
necessary really, but that APIC=disabled issue crops up often. And
validate that your bios is the latest version.

Are you running Cool and Quiet?

 

[frodo]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.general (More info?)

continued....

if all else should fail, you can FORCE the selection of the HAL during XP
Setup. You need to press F5 (yes, F5) when the prompt to Press F6
appears. Then you'll get a "Computer Type" Selection Screen. Do your
research before restoring to this tho, get it wrong and it won't boot.

setup's automatic determination of the computer type can go wrong, there
are several write-ups about it out there - google is your friend. Seems
AMD systems often present the most problems.

Good Luck

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.general (More info?)

Nothing new on the second try.

So I tried to play it safe and made an extra partition for a
test-install. WinXP installs and uses ACPI immediatly. (The new install
is on G:\, the old on C:\ ) "Great", I thought, "now I can risk a
forced repair-install on the other partition", and hit restart.

Well, guess what happens now.

I select the old install in Windows Boot Manager and this pops up:
Windows could not be started.
The following file is either missing or damaged:
<%systemRoot%>\system32\hal.dll

The Installer actually modified files on a partition other then his
install partition!
WHAT THE HELL? How can this happen?!

It modified at least the boot.ini, and probably other files on C:\

I even tried to downgrade the new install to MPS, didn't change the
situation with the old install, but I now have MPS-Uniprocessor-PC
TWICE in the device manager! (Again, how can this happen?!)

I'd really appreciate any ideas on how to get the old install running
again.

Regards,
Martin