Ohh the Pain!!!

[Izekiel]

Right first lets start with a system spec.

AMD Athlon XP 1800+
ASUS A7N8X
512MB Crucial 2100 DDR RAM
20 GB Maxtor Diamond Max HDD
Samsung 40x CD-ROM
Leadtek Winfast A340 (GeForce FX 5200)

and heres the problem...

(Bless those souls at Nvidia)

After coming across several errors on Win XP I decided to do a complete format on the drive and reinstall.

The machie was randomly crashing and hanging up which i thought might be a heat or bios issue as the FX is brand spanking new.

After doing the basics of formatting and getting ready to reinstall i booted up the machine ready to install my nice mint copy of XP. As th einstall started I got an error that to my surprise was to do with the ACPI. Acpi.sys is missing or corrupt, tried the HDD on a nother machine and managed to install fine, though same error on my machine.

So I updated the BIOS for the board, changed the graphics card for my old Creative GF2 Ultra, swapped CDROM drives, completely FDISkED my HDD to death, changed PSU and CMOS battery etc.

So where next anyone got any ideas or am I just praying that my ASUS board isnt screwed which it better not be as its only just over 40 days old).

Any help wuld be appreciated and all suggestiosn will be tried.

Cheers guys (and gals)

[saphalline]

Have you tried using a different CD-ROM drive? I love using Asus mobo's in a power config, but they are picky as h*ll when it comes to what's plugged into them! That CD-ROM drive may be causing the errors, and it's pretty cheap & easy to check the CD-ROM drive. ;)

[malcore]

You could try disabling ACPI in the BIOS before trying to install Windows again (or checking to see if it was enabled to begin with).

For the A7N8X, this option is in the "Advanced Bios Features" section of the BIOS.

Many power users swear by disabling this, and boast of greater system speed. It eliminates IRQ steering, and frees up options for troubleshooting IRQ problems manually.


Edit- if you try this, when you re-install Windows, press F5 when it asks you to press F6 to install SCSI drives. Choose Standard PC, this will prevent Windows from running in ACPI mode even though you have already disabled it in the Bios.

[Izekiel]

Right...

Tried swapping the CD Rom drive for another. No joy there.

Also disabled the ACPI mode in the BIOS and pressed F5 once the SCSI part of XP's Setup started. Still comes up with the same error.

It occurs just after the PCI devices are being checked after it says Windows Setup is starting.

Then wham.... ACPI.sys is missing or corrupt.

This has hapened with 2 version sof XP on my machine, and both are legit. One I even got today to check mine wasnt screwed.

Any other ideas. keep em coming.

[malcore]

More suggestions before an RMA request:

Try new IDE cables

What are your jumpers set to on your drives? Try cable select? If a single drive on each channel, try "single"?

Disable as much of the onboard stuff as possible, ie, USB, sound,game port, serial ports, etc.,etc. until Windows can install and is stable.
Just CPU, Ram, graphics card, 1 cd rom, 1 hard drive.

Make sure CPU is set to proper frequency.

Ease up on Ram timings, or lower the frequency.

Clear CMOS. Remove battery for 24 hrs, then replace.

If all fails, consider RMA.

Good luck

[Active Techster]

when you re-install Windows, press F5 when it asks you to press F6 to install SCSI drives. Choose Standard PC, this will prevent Windows from running in ACPI mode even though you have already disabled it in the Bios.

Brilliant! Thats what I love about hese forums, what a great tip to know if you realised you forgot to change the acpi settings on a new build and went through with the windows install anyway! cheers malcore, excellent tip.


Pid

[Izekiel]

Ok an update on the situation. XP is now freezing before it even get sto initialise the Kernel32.dll on install.

I think its either the Hard Disk or the Mobo. If its the Mobo then its an RAM job, else im buying a new Drive a little sooner than I had anticipated.

[Budfred]

To test the hard drive use the manufacturer's diagnostics which you install on a floppy and run from DOS. If you don't have them, you can download from the manufacturer's site.

To test the RAM, you can download a RAM tester RAMtester (http://www.bootdisk.com) .