Acpi?

[Kingslayer]

What is it?
What does it do?
Why is it bad?
How do you turn it off?

[Jon]

What it is:

Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) is an open industry specification that defines a flexible and extensible hardware interface for the system board. Software designers use this specification to integrate power management features throughout a computer system, including hardware, the operating system and application software. This integration enables Windows 2000 to determine which applications are active and handle all of the power management resources for computer subsystems and peripherals.

What it does:

ACPI enables the operating system to direct power management on a wide range of mobile, desktop and server computers and peripherals.

ACPI is the foundation for the OnNow industry initiative that allows system manufacturers to deliver computers that will start at the touch of a key on a keyboard.

ACPI design is essential to take full advantage of power management and Plug and Play in Windows 2000. If you are not sure if your computer is ACPI-compliant, check your manufacturer's documentation. To change power settings that take advantage of ACPI, use Power Options in Control Panel.

Why it's bad:

It causes IRQ havoc in Win2K systems. Usually you will have anywhere from 5-9 devices on IRQ 7, 9 or 10 with ACPI on.

How to turn it off:


The new beta BIOS on vp6-board.com's site has an ACPI enable/disable feature. This has to be set prior to installing your OS though. If already installed go to Device Manager and change the ACPI Compatible PC to Standard PC by choosing another driver.

Your next question is probably going to be "But what if mine shows MPS Multiprocessor PC?"...I have no idea and am trying to figure that one out myself. I just turn it off in the BIOS before I install.

[Maddman]

ACPI stands for Advanced Configuration and Power Interface
It alows the operating system(win98, win2k) to take over control of things(dolling out irq's,powering or not hd monitors ect.) that until now were controled by settings in the bios. When it works it is ok but when it does not work it is a royal pain in the butt. Whait controls it ignores all the setting for in the bios and also does not realy let you change much in windows either witch leads to irq conflicts that are imposible to fix without removing acpi.

[Shep]

If you already have 2k installed go to device manager and under my computer it will say apci right click on it and select update driver and select standard pc and reboot it will redect your harware and apci will be disabeled. If installing 2k when it says hit f7 for raid drivers hit f6 and this will install without apci.

[Kingslayer]

Shep,

My computer is a dual CPU machine. It says MPS Multiprocessor PC so this isn't an option with me. And I'm not reloading. And you're off by one. You hit F6 to load RAID and you hit F5 to select the type of machine you have.

Jon,

You're right, this is on my VP-6. I haven't swapped bios's with my old VP-6 yet. I can't flash the one that's in my main VP-6. Look's like that's on the schedule when I get home from work. I'll look in the Device Manager, but I didn't see anything like that in there.

I think that is what is screwing with my Virus scan and I'm getting a DEVICE_DRIVER_POWER_STATE failure on shutdown. I'm thinking that this all is an ACPI issue. But the last thing that I want to do is reload again. I'm getting too far behind on everything. But what must be done, must be done.