system halts on ACPI controller

[cigarettebutts]

THanks all who helped me through my last little problem...now onto the next...lol

I just got my system working perfectly However, when trying to boot it up again, the system runs through the POST check (single beep heard as normal) and the motherboard logo (and "press Del to go to Setup") shows up. Then that disappears and a DOS style display shows the hardware installed e.g

Diskette Drive A: Disables
Pri Master Disk: CD-RW,ATA33
First SATA Master Disk: LBA,SATA 1, 120GB
PCI Device listing...

etc

The last PCI device shows up as the ACPI Controller on IRQ 9. This is normal.

However, after this, nothing happens. This screen stays and there is a blinking underscore _ character bottom left of the screen. Windows does not boot.

The system is an AMD Athlon64 X2 4400 with 1GB of RAM. It has Win XP Pro x64 Edition installed on the SATA disk.

I have no idea what is causing the boot process to halt at this point - POST seems to be returning nothing and as far as I'm aware, there are no hardware issues. What could be causing this how do I fix it?

 

[1Dark1Sharigan1]

When you say the screen stays, do you mean it never leaves the DOS load up screen?

 

[cigarettebutts]

yes...it stays on that screen the last line reads...'ACPI controller IRQ 9'
with and a blinking underscore all the way on the left

 

[cigarettebutts]

i know this problem is not unique to me because i googled it and got this: http://www.experts-exchange.com/Hardware/Desktops/Q_21586914.html which is where i found an idenical report, i actally copied and pasted that post onto anandtech because it was exactly the same with every detail.
hopefully someone whos reading this may have seen this problem before and can help
THanks

 

[Doug117]

It almost sounds like somethings fubared with a MBR or the boot loader is screwed. Can you boot from, say a Floppy or a CD? Is it just the hard drive that hangs on boot? (BTW this hang has nothing to do with your ACPI controller)

 

[cigarettebutts]

i dont have a floppy, and am trying to boot from the windows cd...nothing is working, halts at the same place every time...

 

[Doug117]

That is odd... you have set your boot order to attempt to boot from CDROM before HDD, right?

 

[cigarettebutts]

yes...

 

[cigarettebutts]

im sorry i didnt have cdrom to boot first...i tried it, and it still halted at ACPI but then it proceeded to the windows setup screen, im installing right now, hopefully it works out, ill post and let you know, thanks

 

[Doug117]

Well you probably didnt need to reinstall XP but OK... I dont know anything about SATA really since i havent used it yet, but could something be hanging up looking for a PATA HD? I dont see why if your setup has worked before. What did you change before it stopped working?

 

[cigarettebutts]

Im writing this msg from my new machine....ITS RUNNING GREAT...thanks for the tip Doug...

 

[cigarettebutts]

i changed nothing ...and all i did was make it boot from cdrom like you said and its working fine now...i dont understand it...but as long as it keeps working its ok by me...

 

[Doug117]

But its booting from the HD after you let the "Press any key to boot from CD...." thing go by? That IS odd... oh well, as long as it works

 

[cigarettebutts]

very odd indeed...lol...look for posts from me tommorow complaining of it doing the same thing again...lol jk i hope