Suspend unavailable in ACPI compliant XP system

[Muse]

Right now I see no way to hibernate or suspend. I'm running XP Pro on a Gigabyte K8N Pro motherboard. Is that functionality just not supported? I find that hard to believe in this ~4-5 year old motherboard. I'm running the latest BIOS, F14, dated 2005. My ~2001 MSI KT3 Ultra2 motherboard supported, IIRC.

Edit: S1 and S3 are supported and selectable in the BIOS, but Suspend is greyed out in XP...

 

[Muse]

Under Power Management in the BIOS (I have the latest BIOS loaded, F14), I can choose S1 or S3 type suspend (it doesn't seem to matter which one I choose, it doesn't work either way). I set the power button to require 4+ second press to turn off, otherwise go into the selected suspend mode.

However, in Windows XP, Control Panel, Power Options, there's no mention of suspend. I'm only given the option of powering off immediately when pressing the power button or do nothing or being asked what to do. When asked, I can only Turn Off or Restart. Standby is greyed out. Why is it greyed out? Windows help says the options in Power Options will reflect what's supported by the motherboard, i.e. the BIOS. I don't see a setting in the BIOS to enable it. It's already set up in BIOS, evidently enabled.

Edit: I suppose the next step is to contact Gigabyte support and hope for an explanation. I doubt they're going to produce another version of the BIOS.

 

[Muse]

Hunting around I found this interesting post on how Windows determines ACPI status of a motherboard and what you can do about it.

MS Knowledgebase article on How Windows XP Determines ACPI Compatibility

 

[corkyg]

You should be able to run Suspend in XP. Anyway, it's a bump . . .

Suspend

Suspend will be grayed out if Hibernate is checked. You can't do both.

 

[Muse]

Originally posted by: corkyg
You should be able to run Suspend in XP. Anyway, it's a bump . . .

Suspend

Suspend will be grayed out if Hibernate is checked. You can't do both.

Thanks. Well, Hibernate is nowhere to be found! There's no Hibernate tab in Power Options in Control Panel. Windows XP help says that if the tab isn't there my computer doesn't support it. Well, I can live without hibernate (once burned twice shy... well, it's OK when it works, but in my experience it doesn't always work, especially with an older install of Windows), but I really would like to use S3 Suspend. I see that in my BIOS and enabled it there, as near as I can tell. But XP isn't seeing it. My thought right now is that XP decided I don't have an ACPI compliant system when I did the install. The only workaround I can imagine just now is that alter the TXTSETUP.SIF file on my XP install disk. It's just one character in the file:

It reads now:
[ACPIOptions]
ACPIEnable = 2

I'm going to change that section to read:

[ACPIOptions]
ACPIEnable = 1

Well, as soon as I can figure out how to burn the disk. I don't know if it will work. It tells XP to accept my system as ACPI compliant as long as the BIOS supports it and not decide based on its list of ACPI compliant mobos.

 

[Muse]

Originally posted by: corkyg
You should be able to run Suspend in XP. Anyway, it's a bump . . .

Suspend

Suspend will be grayed out if Hibernate is checked. You can't do both.

That trick is nice, and if I can get the system's suspend to work, I'm going to create that shortcut and use it all the time. However, it's not working on the system because it doesn't support ACPI, and I believe (if I can believe what I'm seeing at that knowledge base article) it's because when XP installed it decided not to support ACPI based on either it's data or its evaluation of the ACPI support of the motherboard.

I'll be happy enough with Suspend, preferably S3 I think. Hibernate I don't need. In my experience my computer was slow to recover from hibernate.

 

[Muse]

When I check out Computer in Device Manager is says ACPI Uniprocessor PC

I take it, then, that the XP installation already configured ACPI enabled and reinstalling XP and forcing ACPI support is not the issue.

Today is Sunday, so I'll be calling Gigabyte support tomorrow and see if I can get an explanation and hopefully be steered to a solution.

I'm wondering if removing all my PCI cards during installation might not be a bad idea. Maybe XP installation decided that something in my system wasn't going to work properly. I have zilch to choose from in Power Options: Monitor turn off after X minutes, HD turn off after Y minutes. Press power button and do nothing, ask me what to do or shut down, that's all! This sucks.

 

[Muse]

OK, so I downloaded the latest nVidia WHQL driver (169.21_forceware_winxp_32bit_english_whql.exe) and I was about to uninstall my video driver and install the new one (I saw posts suggesting that this problem is the great majority of the time due to not having an updated video driver installed) when I thought I'd continue what I was doing earlier in the day before I took a break from all this -- I had done a google on "standby greyed out" and got lots of hits. On the second Google page was this one:

http://forums.windrivers.com/showthread.php?t=81547

A guy suggested the fellow having the problem do an Everest Home Edition report and paste it in a post. Having the program already installed, I did a report and started searching through it for a clue. I left off at around 25% into the long report. Just now, I decided to look further into the report before uninstalling my display driver and installing the new one. I noticed this about my rather newish 500 GB SATA HD:

[ SAMSUNG HD501LJ (S0MUJ1PP310938) ]

ATA Device Properties:
Model ID SAMSUNG HD501LJ
Serial Number S0MUJ1PP310938
Revision CR100-10
Parameters 969021 cylinders, 16 heads, 63 sectors per track, 554 bytes per sector
LBA Sectors 976773168
Buffer 16 MB (Dual Ported, Read Ahead)
Multiple Sectors 16
ECC Bytes 4
Max. PIO Transfer Mode PIO 4
Max. UDMA Transfer Mode UDMA 6 (ATA-133)
Active UDMA Transfer Mode UDMA 5 (ATA-100)
Unformatted Capacity 516064 MB

ATA Device Features:
SMART Supported
Security Mode Supported
Power Management Supported
Advanced Power Management Not Supported
Write Cache Supported
Host Protected Area Supported
Power-Up In Standby Not Supported
Automatic Acoustic Management Supported
48-bit LBA Supported
Device Configuration Overlay Supported

ATA Device Manufacturer:
Company Name Samsung
Product Information http://www.samsung.com/Products/HardDiskDrive/index.htm
- - - -
In particular, I noticed where it said:

Advanced Power Management Not Supported
...and...
Power-Up In Standby Not Supported

So, I figuring it was another wild goose chase (I've been doing them all weekend trying to resolve this!), I went into the BIOS and disabled SATA HD support. Upon rebooting, my 500 GB SATA drive is no longer seen, but my Standby and Hibernate are suddenly ENABLED!

I find this amazing. SATA HD's are supposed to be an advance, a relative newcomer in the PC storage scene, and installing one has disabled my ACPI! I wonder if there is a workaround? Maybe if I get an SATA controller card?? Or maybe if I get a different SATA HD?

 

[Auric]

Originally posted by: corkyg

Suspend will be grayed out if Hibernate is checked. You can't do both.

Nein. I have both Stand By and Hibernate together. Indeed, it can be configured to automatically go into Stand By and then Hibernate after set periods of time. Power and Sleep buttons can be configured for either (amongst other options). Manually, Turn Off Computer offers both with Shift toggling the latter option.

Muse, see your other thread.

 

[Peter]

Suspend and Hibernate are unavailable when your system is missing an essential hardware driver. Most prominently, it happens when you're on the fallback VGA driver because no card specific driver has been installed.

 

[Muse]

Originally posted by: Peter
Suspend and Hibernate are unavailable when your system is missing an essential hardware driver. Most prominently, it happens when you're on the fallback VGA driver because no card specific driver has been installed.

I tried updating the video card driver... several posts I'd read said that it's usually because of that. It didn't resolve the problem. What did resolve it was either disabling the SATA function in the BIOS, or changing the "Serial ATA Function" in the BIOS from BASE to RAID. I have no idea why this was necessary since I don't have a RAID array set up, and have no intention of setting up RAID. I have a single SATA HD, is all (Samsung H501LJ 500 GB internal), so I figured BASE was the proper setting, not RAID. Anyone know what's up with this? Is there a downside to having it set to RAID if I'm not doing any kind of RAID? And why is ACPI not functional unless that BIOS setting is RAID?

 

[Muse]

I finally have a solution. I was pointed to the latest Silicon Image non-RAID ("BASE") driver for the SATA controller chip on my motherboard. I installed that instead of the RAID driver, and now I have ACPI support and can run the SATA HD in BASE mode, probably a better idea than running it as RAID when it's not installed in a RAID array.

 

[Peter]

That would be just the same "an essential driver is no good" condition

 

[Muse]

Originally posted by: Peter
That would be just the same "an essential driver is no good" condition

Maybe. Not sure what you mean. What blows my mind is that the device has two modes of operation selectable in the BIOS (BASE and RAID) and evidently a different driver needs to be installed depending on which mode you set in the BIOS. I only became aware of this apparent fact after realizing I wasn't getting ACPI support.

 

[Muse]

Originally posted by: corkyg
You should be able to run Suspend in XP. Anyway, it's a bump . . .

Suspend

Suspend will be grayed out if Hibernate is checked. You can't do both.

I like that trick, the shortcut to go immediately into suspend and used it a couple of times. Then I enabled hibernation. Now, with hibernation enabled I am given the choice if I do Control+Alt+Delete and access the Shutdown menu item of all these:

Standby
Hibernate
Turn off
Restart
Log Off <my name>
Switch User Winkey+L

However, once having enabled hibernation that shortcut instantly started the hibernation process instead of the Standby process. I'd actually like to have a shortcut for each. Maybe that's what Corkyg meant by "You can't do both" Well, probably not, but indeed that shortcut seems to do one or the other depending on whether you've enabled hibernation in Power Options.

 

[Peter]

Originally posted by: Muse

Originally posted by: Peter
That would be just the same "an essential driver is no good" condition

Maybe. Not sure what you mean. What blows my mind is that the device has two modes of operation selectable in the BIOS (BASE and RAID) and evidently a different driver needs to be installed depending on which mode you set in the BIOS. I only became aware of this apparent fact after realizing I wasn't getting ACPI support.

The background here is that if there is one single driver in the system that doesn't support device state save/restore during the sleep/wake transitions, then Windows won't even try.

What you got there is Microsoft's own generic IDE/SATA drivers for "base" mode, and a vendor specific driver for RAID mode. The former is complete, the latter is lacking said functionality.

An update to the RAID mode driver may or may not help just as well.


You didn't lack "ACPI support" by the way, the ACPI HAL is and was running all the time quite alright. What Windows refuses to do is S-state transitions, from S0 (working) to S1, S3, S4 (powered sleep, suspend-to-RAM, suspend-to-disk). Everything else ACPI, for example processor speed transitions, thermal monitoring, fan control etc. blah blah still works.

 

[kylef]

Let this thread be an example of why sometimes the "system integration" work that OEMs perform (culminating in the logo certification process), is essential for 99% of the user community, who never know the amount of work and testing that goes into bringing a new PC model to market with all components working together as advertised.

 

[toadeater]

Originally posted by: kylef
Let this thread be an example of why sometimes the "system integration" work that OEMs perform (culminating in the logo certification process).

I don't see how this thread illustrates this when all he did was load the wrong driver?

Logo certification... eh... like those Vista ready PCs?

At least when I build a PC, I know what parts are in it and what they're capable of. I can maintain the PC myself without calling up tech support, which is usually of dubious quality, if not outright useless. And OEMs are always trying to skimp on one thing or another; such as underpowered graphics cards, underpowered PSUs, or high latency RAM without so much as a heat spreader.

OEM hardware overall, except for overpriced boutique systems (who use retail parts anyway) and Apple, is actually of cheaper quality compared to retail parts. The motherboards OEMs put in their systems are barebone budget boards with cheaper quality capacitors and power circuitry.

And then there's the craplets.

LOL. Don't tell people on a hardware forum that they should appreciate OEMs. The whole reason we build our own PCs is because it's better than buying OEM, whether there's some logo on it or not.

 

[Muse]

Originally posted by: toadeater

Originally posted by: kylef
Let this thread be an example of why sometimes the "system integration" work that OEMs perform (culminating in the logo certification process).

I don't see how this thread illustrates this when all he did was load the wrong driver?

Logo certification... eh... like those Vista ready PCs?

At least when I build a PC, I know what parts are in it and what they're capable of. I can maintain the PC myself without calling up tech support, which is usually of dubious quality, if not outright useless. And OEMs are always trying to skimp on one thing or another; such as underpowered graphics cards, underpowered PSUs, or high latency RAM without so much as a heat spreader.

OEM hardware overall, except for overpriced boutique systems (who use retail parts anyway) and Apple, is actually of cheaper quality compared to retail parts. The motherboards OEMs put in their systems are barebone budget boards with cheaper quality capacitors and power circuitry.

And then there's the craplets.

LOL. Don't tell people on a hardware forum that they should appreciate OEMs. The whole reason we build our own PCs is because it's better than buying OEM, whether there's some logo on it or not.

Toadeater, I can see you've been eating your toads.

I like your argument and I'll add my own anecdotal evidence FWIW. My first system I bought used from an electrical engineer who built it himself from parts. After that, I assembled my own systems from scratch after doing lots of online research. I started off pretty green so I read and read threads and picked the components that people were having good luck with in systems using the motherboard, which was a Tyan Tomcat 1. I too, had good luck.

Then I built another system, again with a highly touted MB, an Epox 8K7A, and I still have that mobo and it works fine.

Next was an MSI KT3 Ultra2, still works great.

My next mobo was an MSI OEM (MSI K8N Neo-FSR/ V V2.0) I found out about reading a thread in Hot Deals. It cost about $34 shipped. This was the bad experience. I got it from Geeks.com and in less than a year the board went bonkers and killed two video cards and a PSU before I realized that it was the MB that had gone. Being OEM, MSI refused to extend warranty. It was evidently developed for some PC manufacturers to put in their branded systems. This PC nightmare played out over most of last month.

I replaced that MB with a brand name (Gigabyte) MB. No more OEM MBs for me! I've bought OEM HD's, and CPU's which AFAIK are the same as retail boxed components, just without the packaging and accouterments (e.g. HSF for the CPU, I got a 3rd party HSF that was definitely better). Please, correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[Muse]

I have Standby enabled now, using the BASE SATA chip driver for my siI3512 chip, but unless I reawaken quickly (i.e. in a few minutes) I'm finding that the system doesn't properly awaken from the S3 Standby. I press the power button but never get video and I have to reset the machine. Could this by a driver issue (specifically the SATAlink driver I installed for that SI chip) or is something else likely at play?

 

[Peter]

You should rather look for a "Repost Video during Resume" control - both in BIOS and Windows. Use it.

 

[Muse]

Originally posted by: Peter
You should rather look for a "Repost Video during Resume" control - both in BIOS and Windows. Use it.

You're suggesting looking for that control in my BIOS and Windows? I've scoured my BIOS pretty thoroughly over the last couple of weeks and there's no such setting in the Award 6.0 BIOS. Where would I find that control in Windows?

Thanks!

 

[Muse]

bump

The problem happens when restoring from hibernation too if the system has been asleep too long. Upon attempting to awake the system, after normal post messages, Windows begins the restore and then the screen goes blank (soft glow), the numlock-on light on my keyboard lights up (I never use numlock) and the system becomes completely unresponsive although the fans run.

So, Standby and Hibernation are not available, having installed the non-RAID driver for my SATA siI3512 chip, but they aren't working properly. There are now no problem devices in Device Manager.

 

[Peter]

In Windows, the control I recommended you to turn on should be in the Hibernation section of the Power Management control panel. But I don't /really/ remember and I don't have it in front of me right now.

 

[tcsenter]

Originally posted by: Muse
I've scoured my BIOS pretty thoroughly over the last couple of weeks and there's no such setting in the Award 6.0 BIOS. Where would I find that control in Windows?

Its not available through any property pages in Windows XP. In BIOS, it can also appear as Run VGA or Video BIOS [if/on] resume, but many BIOS have it hidden.

A potential problem with using the latest Silicon Image driver, is that the Silicon Image BIOS (i.e. firmware) embedded in the last BIOS for K8N Pro is dated January 2004 (v4.3.47). Often, newer drivers for these controller chips can require a particular minimum BIOS version. And according to the Silicon Image release notes, the latest driver should be used with Silicon Image BIOS v4.3.84. Although that is just the 'recommended' version, the 'required' BIOS version may not be far behind it.

The controller BIOS is often updated in conjunction with the driver precisely for these kinds of glitches. You could try either going back to a driver that is a little closer to the current Silicon Image BIOS, or use a modded BIOS that has incorporated the latest Silicon Image firmware. I can get the new Silicon Image firmware into the BIOS file, but I have no way of knowing what the result will be. It is very unlikely to result in a bad flash, but it might introduce new problems while solving none.

You might also try disabling Cool-n-Quiet if enabled and/or updating the AMD CPU driver.