Upgrading to ACPI Support In Windows XP


In some cases, a BIOS update can make a standard PC ACPI-compliant. If your computer is shown in Device Manager as a Standard PC and you want to upgrade to ACPI support, your first step is to check with your computer vendor to get the latest BIOS. In most cases, updating the BIOS doesn’t require swapping out the BIOS chip (as it did on early PCs); rather, you copy a vendor-provided program to a floppy disk and boot the computer from the floppy disk. The program writes new data to the BIOS.

If you use a BIOS update to upgrade a system from APM to ACPI support, you should reinstall Windows XP after performing the upgrade. That’s because ACPI support is reliant on an ACPI HAL, which you are able to get only by reinstalling Windows. You are able to perform an upgrade installation. (In other words, you don’t require to perform a clean install.) This is a comparatively painless operation that keeps your presented settings, programs, and files.

During setup, you can force Windows to install the standard PC HAL or an ACPI HAL rather than relying on the Setup program’s judgment about your computer’s level of ACPI support. There’s seldom reason to do so—although symptoms of noncompliance might not be immediately apparent, Setup is usually right about which computers properly adhere to the ACPI specification—but you might need to do this if you encounter power-related problems with one HAL or the other.

To specify which HAL to install, follow these steps:

1. Boot from the Windows XP CD to initiate setup.

2. At the point in text-mode setup where a message at the bottom of the screen reads “Press F6 if you need to install a third party SCSI or RAID driver,” press F5. (press F5 at the F6 prompt.)

3. Use the Up Arrow key and Down Arrow key to scroll through the list of computer types. Highlight the one you want and then press Enter.