illegal IO port address

ishiii

Hi guys;
Wasnt really sure where this thread should be, but here it is.

My brother inlaw's PC has a bad case of the blue screens.
This is what I have be able to gather so far in our short video confrences, short because there PC is anything but stable.

It is a 1ghz processor, I dont know what or on what board. WINXPhome SP1
A RADEON 9000 vid card that is 6 months old.
Ram was added 4 or 5 weeks ago.

A few days ago the computer blue screened during a game of "postal 2".
Now the PC blue screens at random but doesnt last more then 30 minutes before it dies. They tell me that they got a driver curropt message after the first blue screen, and it forced them into save mode after which they got back into windows but like I said it crashes hard all the time.

I got them into the event viewer and got this message as the cause of all the crashes:
AMLI: ACPI BIOS is attempting to write to an illegal IO port address (0xcf8), which lies in the 0xcf8 - 0xcff protected address range. This could lead to system instability. Please contact your system vendor for technical assistance.

A search of the net got me to this web site:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=http://support.microsoft.com:80/support/kb/articles/q283/6/49.asp&NoWebContent=1
Which tells me it is a BIOS issue, atleast thats what I got from it. That error and given the fact that the PC has worked fine for a year or more tells me it isnt the BIOS. Maybe Im wrong.

What I have tried to do for them so far is this.
Got them the cat uninstaller and the latest version of catylst drivers and gave them instruction on what to do. I dont know if this has solved anything yet. There is a 16 hour time difference.

Any ideas???? MEMTEST86??? LOL. chipset drivers???? I am certin that no drivers have been updated ever on that pc, same with the bios.

keto

Your on the right tracks with all of your thoughts, I would say. Finding out what mobo it is would tell us a lot more but yes, bios and chipset driver upgrades would be very early on the 'to do' list, with MEMTEST not far behind. Power supply, OS reinstall also on the list as potentials.

primesuspect

Memtest86.com

Straight_Man

Then, if RAM good, turn off the BIOS shadowing(may be called caching) in BIOS. And install replacement chipset drivers from motherboard mfr's site for that motherboard, the inf files will map valid ACPI and Power Management if you get the chipset drivers for YOUR version of windows AND for your motherboard (owner's versions). Also replace CMOS battery.

POSSIBLE overheating or dying video card RAM also, but more likely a power management problem. IF you get always an ACPI problem, look at power management settings, for 98 SE and up through ME, setting ACPI to 1.4 in BIOS can do this, setting ACPI to version 1.1 with user or manually defined power settings can fix this, and an unupdated 98 or ME can do this big time. Modern board, with drained CMOS battery, may have BIOS defaulting, it defaults to ACPI 1.4 these days and some O\Ss cannot handle this and you get Widnwos trying to timeout shutdown and BIOS ignoring it or vice versa with spontaneous reboots or machines that just crash randomly to power OFF or suspend invoked from BIOS with Windows totally unaware a shutdown is about to happen.

If just a game, check what DirectX version game wants and what version directx is installed by doing Start|Run and entering dxdiag. ME and 98 Se come with DirectX 7.0.... DirectX 9.0 is wanted for new games, some mothrboards cannot handle DirectX 9.0 and many cards want DirectX 8.1 or back and games ditto. Fresh XP install is DirectX 8.1, subversion something.

John.

ishiii

Thanks guys;
Ill see what I can do for them from the other side of the pacific.