ACPI error causing reboot 4

[Boozer]

Hello! I have a computer that reboots about every five minutes. It will not reboot if you are running a program, like winamp, but if one is just surfing the net it will reboot. I have all the power saving features turned off in XP and in the BIOS. I have XP set to NOT automatically restart on errors. When going through the system log, this is the error that appears every time:

AMLI: ACPI BIOS is attempting to read from an illegal IO port address (0xcfc), which lies in the 0xcf8 - 0xcff protected address range. This could lead to system instability. Please contact your system vendor for technical assistance.

I replaced the power supply and am not sure what to check from here on out. Any suggestions?

 

[smah]

Check the manufacturer's web site for a bios update.

 

[gargouille]

Via chipset, right?
Tried loading newer Via drivers?

 

[gargouille]

Did some more looking and gotta' say smah is spot on! (as usual!)

 

[Boozer]

Hey! Thanks for the suggestions, I updated the bios, which did get rid of the ACPI errors. I also updated the VIA drivers to the latest 4in1's. Unfortunately, the reboot still occurs every five minutes It does not reboot if I let it sit at the boot disk MS-DOS prompt, but does reboot in Safe mode or regular mode. No other errors in the logs... Any other suggestions?

 

[linney]

Have another look in the Event Viewer both System and Application folders.

Check any "Information" line that mentions "savedump" and you should find reference to "recovered from a bug check". This is the Stop Error that is causing your problem.

 

[gargouille]

We may have gone for a red herring, 'cause from what I'm reading the error message was there, but in a majority of the cases, that was it, there were no other ill effects from it.
I think you need to download and run memtest...don't have the link on this computer...

 

[smah]

I think this is the link that gargouille is referring to.

http://www.simmtester.com/PAGE/products/doc/docinfo.asp

Another thing to check out is the power supply. These can cause hard reboots without anything in the event viewer and without a BSOD.

 

[Boozer]

Thanks again guys, the 256 MB stick that I had in there was bad. Failed the mem test 5 out of 5 times. I replaced it with a good 256 MB stick from a comp that has been running fine (this stick also passed the mem test 5 out of 5 time), confident that that was my problem when... *beep* The comp rebooted *then i threw monitor through wall because it was the only thing not broken* I have all cards disconnected except the vid card and just my main hard drive connected. I noticed a faint rythmic tick, tick, tick, tick sound from the PC speaker at the time of the reboot, I can also here that sometimes during startup. A couple times, it seemed to take my comp about 30 seconds before i heard the post beep. I'm going to return the new power supply i got a try a, now, newer new one I'll let ya know what happens. Any thoughts about the PC speaker tick or the delayed POST?

 

[smah]

Been there, done that (Just a couple of weeks ago as a matter of fact). That ticking is some part of your computer getting power (probably on the m/b), then not, then again. If you wait long enough, it will eventually sound like machine gun fire. At boot, enter the bios & go to the section about health or voltage settings or something like that. On mine, quite often the +12V was running just over 11, one time even 10.9

Replace the power supply.