Jun
29
if NOT "1" == "1" goto HELL
Filed Under Technical
Man, ACPI sucked when it first came out.
skankin and I fought this renegade Gateway machine yesterday… it was a first generation P4 (<2GHz). It was working fine… until SP2 was installed.
Then, on bootup, it got the following error [paraphrased]:
c0000221 unknown hard error - NTDLL.DLL
This error is fully reproducable (format, install XP with SP1a, working fine, install SP2, boom || format, install XP with SP2 slipstreamed, boom) and is always the same. It's definitely hardware-related.
Tested the memory thoroughly, replaced the optical drive, even tried another power supply. I had the idea to flash the BIOS, since that's usually where the original SP2 problems came from [not SP2 itself, but shoddy BIOSes]. I'm skeptical because I know that SP2 brings out the bugs that already existed in hardware [and people usually just blame Windows for "sucking", when in reality it's the hardware that sucks].
We toiled away playing with hardware for a while, and skankin had to go to an appointment, so I started experimenting with it on my own. I decided to force a different hardware abstraction layer [HAL]. To force a different HAL, tap F5 while Windows setup is starting up [at the same point where you would normally press F6 to install a mass storage device driver, scsi, sata, etc]. I chose to force ACPI, to see if Windows was simply detecting it wrong [read: BIOS reporting it wrong]. No go. In fact, it was even worse. I got a STOP 0×8E instead of the hard error, and I got it much sooner than before. Ok, now I've proven that this BIOS' support for ACPI sucks. On to the meat of the experiment:
Standard PC. ACPI is usually tied to APM, and as such, will always present you with the "It's now safe to turn off your computer" message when you go to turn off the computer – which is pretty much the only setback I can think of when not using ACPI. As an added bonus, IRQ sharing is impossible while under 'Standard PC' HAL. Hooray! [IRQ sharing should be abolished. Actually, IRQs should be abolished. Go Mac!]
After installing the Standard PC HAL, the thing ran like a dream. Guess what? The BIOS on this motherboard sucks. Another one bites the dust…
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This is DjLizard; just testing to make sure commenting still works. skankin said it didn't work. What a retard :P