Nvidia vs. ACPI Power Management

Hi all,

We're working on a very hot, new machine (Pentium 4 2.2GHz, Abit TH7ii RAID motherboard, 4 x 256M RAMBUS (Samsung and Corsair), Nvidia GeForce4 Ti4600 AGP 4X video, Creative Live 256 PCI sound, Plextor 40x12x40 CD-RW, 16x48 DVD-ROM, 120G WD U100 hard disk, WinMe). It's a "wow" machine, but . . . have we got problems!

WinMe load ran without a hitch, hit the desktop and looked fine. (Our hard disk is partitioned as one big FAT32 partition). The only strange thing to this point was that we set the RAMBus to 300MHz (known bug in this motherboard). Intel Chipset Drivers loaded fine; Intel Applicaton Accelerator loaded fine; DirectX 8.0 loaded fine; RAID drivers loaded fine.

This is when the trouble started. We loaded video drivers (Nvidia Detonator v28.32 for Win9x); upon reboot we got a Blue Screen:mad: 0D : 014F : 00004EB7 . I've noted this address because it's very characteristic of the problem. Reboots show a lot of strange behavior, such as hang on a black screen, black sreen with flashing cursor, white screen, white screen with WinMe cursor. Msgsrv32(Not Responding) errors are common.

Here are the strange observations. If you right click the desktop, the New option is on the bottom, below Properties. If you go to Display Settings | Screen Saver | Power Saving, the Hibernate function is missing. Systray is absent from the System Tray.

We tried the following (unsuccessfully) to get the video to work. Disable Power Saving options, set VGA mode (640x480 16-color); clean Registry; Scandisk; set Video BIOS not cacheable in BIOS; disable every possible option in BIOS power management; disable RAID controller in BIOS; update the video drivers to the very most recent v 29.42; uninstall the Intel Application Accelerator; new motherboard; new power supply; new memory.

It appears to be some deep conflict between ACPI power management and the Nvidia video drivers. The only "positive" thing we've been able to do is to enter the Safe Mode and change the GeForce 4 display driver to a dumb VGA driver. The system then boots and shuts down faithfully with no errors. Of course, it looks terrible. We loaded the Creative sound drivers and the sound works fine. We also loaded Roxio CD Creator, and it works fine. But, if we revert the display driver back to the GeForce 4 Ti 4600, the system Blue Screens, hangs, gives lots of strange errors, etc.

Any ideas? We're out of 'em! :confused: Thanks, in advance, for your help!

Best Regards,

Shaun

If on-board graphics are present that must be disabled before the card is installed. If it is there, now you've got restart in SafeMode; delete the card in Device Manager; shut straight down; remove the card; and restart and get the on-board graphics working correctly first.

Then you enter Device Manager; Disable the on-board graphics under Display Adapters; shut straight dwn; install card; restart; install drivers when Windows detects new hardware and runs the Wizard to look for the driver.

Dear Styx,

Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately, this mobo has no on-board video (though it does have on-board sound, which is completely disabled).

Any other ideas?! Help!!!

Best Regards,

Shaun

Shaun,
I've got exactly the same problem, still havent fixed it though, the closest i got was by going through device manager and disabling everything to do with ACPI, then when i restarted the graphics card was installed but did not work correctly, and i couldnt changed the display setting, when i restarted it went back to how it was, and i havent been able to repeat this. Recently i got the following message: Explorer.exe could not load, you need to re-install windows!, so i did bu this didnt fix anything.

Please someone help!!

Matt.

Hi!

Sorry to hear that you've experienced the same problem as we did. :( Here is what we did to solve the problem...

We tried every thinkable resolution, including disabling of the ACPI and tweaking many parts of it. None of this had any beneficial effect. We reloaded Win Me with ACIP disabled in BIOS, but still had the same problem.

We have contacts on the "inside" at Invidia, so we e-mailed all the details to them. They never replied - this told us that they know about the problem but don't know how to get Win Me to work with their Ti series.

In the end, we installed Windows XP Pro. It installed with no error and the system was completed in about 40 minutes! :cool: I know this is not a true resolution, but is the only thing we could find to get our system going.

Best regards,

Shaun Black

Thanks, the next option on my list was to try a different os, so i'll take your advice and go with XP:)

cheers for the help.

Matt

Your Welcome!

Let us know what you find out!

Have a great day,

Shaun

Just after I ordered this particular card, it has not even arrived yet, I came across the following review in PC World (magazine)

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WHAT'S NOT: At $380, the E-GeForce4 Ti 4600 isn't cheap. We had trouble installing the drivers on our Windows Me test system, but we installed the card under Windows XP without problems. The card's one-year parts and labor warranty is shorter than most. In addition, technical support is not toll free, and it's available for only 9 hours on weekdays.

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See the full review here:
[http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/artic...,103478,00.asp

If anyone has found the solution please reply since it seems I,ll be having the same problems in a couple of days

Bad news I'm afraid I tried for 3 weeks to get mine working in ME, and i had no look, In the end I installed Win 2000 and it worked fine, you see you need to be able to disable ACPI and as far as i know ME wont let you do that, if you try to remove from the device manager, when you restart windows throws a load of errors (mentioned previously) and then freeze, I dont know about XP but in win 2000 during the installation if you press F5 it lets you manually select the HAL on the computer (ACPI is one of the options) from the list i selected "Normal Computer" and it worked fine. so unless you can find some way of disabling ACPI in ME im affraid it will mean you'll have to install a different OS :(

Good luck with you mission!!

Matt :)

matthewthms,

You may have a point there. I disabled ACPI in the BIOS, but it is still present in device manager after boot. And

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"The device is working normally"

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I'll post back if I come up with anything.

This is the answer I got from PNY.
Since the card has not arrived yet, I am unable to check it out. But I thought I post it anyway.
I have one 512 MB DDR stick, so personally I might have trouble with this anyhow.
But maybe someone else can use this info meanwhile.

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Make sure that you have all the latest update files from Microsoft for your operating system as well as your Internet Explorer – including DirectX, Critical files, as well as other security, and Internet Explorer update files. You may also want to consider updating to the latest version of Internet Explorer. The updates can be obtained by clicking here.

Try the following exactly as stated – PLEASE NOTE THAT this is an edit to the system registry and if not done correctly will halt the system. If you are not comfortable making these changes PLEASE contact our technical support team or other computer professional for assistance.

1. Remove all RAM memory above 256MB
2.Restart Windows
3.Open Notepad to edit the system.INI file
4.Scroll down to the [VCache] entry and change the minimum and maximum [VCache] settings to the following:

[VCache]
a. MinFileCache = 51200
b. MaxFileCache= 56320

5. Save System.INI file
6. Shutdown Windows
7. Install all RAM above 256MB
8. Start Windows
9. Install nVidia graphic card drivers
10. Works for Windows 95/98/ME

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Well,

I do not know what to say, video card arrived yesterday. I installed it this morning, yes in ME. Absolutely no problems. Did not have to get updated drivers, program installed without any hassle following the instructions in the book. took about an hour counting the switching of the video cards. And the relocation of one hard drive on account of the lenght of the card.

Normally I would NOT read the instruction manual but in this case, considering all the trouble people had with it, I decided to follow the instructions to the letter.

Disabled ACPI in the BIOS, it no longer shows up on boot with an assigned IRQ though it is present in device manager. And according to it,

Quote:

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The device is working normally

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Checked the thing out, ran the DirectX video diagnostic tools, played an full screen MP3 video file. Played a DVD. Did some gaming. No problems anywhere. Guess my machine must be the exception to the rule.
resolution is set to 1280x1024 32 bit, which is the upper limit of my present monitor.

Thanks for all the help and thanks for reading this.

As an addendum to my lost post,
I just reinstalled an old game I had called Kyodai-Mahjongg since it uses open GL.
No problems there either, though it innitially filled about 3/4 of the screen, but switched to full screen before the game was fully loaded in.
George.

I gained yet another bonus by turning off the ACPI in the BIOS.
IRQ's 2 and 3 which were previously unused because the machine insisted that they belonged to the 2 serial busses on the mainboard, which by the way were disabled in the BIOS since I never use them, are now being put to good use and at the same time resolving some earlier problems I had getting everything runnuing just right IRQ wise that is. See copy of system information, IRQ listing below.

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IRQ 0 System timer OK
IRQ 1 Standard 101/102-Key or Microsoft Natural Keyboard OK
IRQ 2 Programmable interrupt controller OK
IRQ 3 VIA OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller OK
IRQ 3 ACPI IRQ Holder for PCI IRQ Steering OK
IRQ 4 USB 2.0 PCI to USB Enhanced Host Controller OK
IRQ 4 ACPI IRQ Holder for PCI IRQ Steering OK
IRQ 5 Creative SB Live! OK
IRQ 5 NEC USB Open Host Controller (E13+) OK
IRQ 5 ACPI IRQ Holder for PCI IRQ Steering OK
IRQ 6 Standard Floppy Disk Controller OK
IRQ 7 ECP Printer Port (LPT1) OK
IRQ 8 System CMOS/real time clock OK
IRQ 9 SCI IRQ used by ACPI bus OK
IRQ 9 NEC USB Open Host Controller (E13+) OK
IRQ 9 ACPI IRQ Holder for PCI IRQ Steering OK
IRQ 10 NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4600 OK
IRQ 10 Intel(R) 82801DB/DBM USB Universal Host Controller - 24C2 OK
IRQ 10 Intel(R) 82801DB/DBM SMBus Controller - 24C3 OK
IRQ 10 ACPI IRQ Holder for PCI IRQ Steering OK
IRQ 10 ACPI IRQ Holder for PCI IRQ Steering OK
IRQ 11 Intel(R) 82801DB/DBM USB Universal Host Controller - 24C4 OK
IRQ 11 Intel(R) 82801DB/DBM USB Universal Host Controller - 24C7 OK
IRQ 11 HPT372 UDMA/ATA133 RAID Controller OK
IRQ 11 ACPI IRQ Holder for PCI IRQ Steering OK
IRQ 11 ACPI IRQ Holder for PCI IRQ Steering OK
IRQ 13 Numeric data processor OK
IRQ 14 Intel(r) 82801DB Ultra ATA Controller OK
IRQ 14 Primary Ultra ATA controller OK
IRQ 15 Intel(r) 82801DB Ultra ATA Controller OK
IRQ 15 Secondary Ultra ATA controller OK

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