win98 on new pc - ACPI / monitor resets

bjp

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Aug 8, 2002
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18,510
please help.
i moved my old hard drives with win98 to my new computer while i wait for new hard disk to arrive. it all worked, but somehow, in the course of endless rebooting to sort out a modem driver / PnP problem, something seems to have gone wrong with the ACPI / power management stuff. Windows starts and gets to the password dialog, but then the monitor suddenly clicks and displays a message saying something about powering down in 5 secs (same as it does when the computer's shut down normally.) then, hitting Esc brings it back up (to a blank Desktop), and i can get the Task Manager (with nothing in it). ...and that's it -- Windoze hasn't loaded.

the monitor is a Viewsonic E70f, the motherboard is a GA-8IRXP, the graphics card is a Leadtek A170 GeForce MX420.

help! please! <g> i have no idea what to try. i've tried fiddling around with various power management / ACPI settings. it worked ok with the power management stuff on the BIOS set to the option that allows the OS to do it.

aarrgghh!

Brian
 

bjp

Distinguished
Aug 8, 2002
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18,510
i got a bit further with this.
it seems like my user profile got messed up. (<..thinking..again..> maybe i ..don't need to have XP on the new HD; maybe i should go to linux .. maybe this should be when i leave windows for work and have linux at home. i wish i could get a real, unbiased [?] idea of just how linux installing compares with the windows crap -- i've had _years_ of windows installing crap -- it's no better with PnP than it ever was. why can't they ever get to the point where you can install things and uninstall them without things getting screwed up along the way. how nice to not have a "registry".)

anyway, this weird "power management" thing is only happening when i log in with a particular user profile. the other thing that happened was when i loaded the windows drivers by stepping through them one by one, it went odd when it got the the MS Intellimouse driver -- it ground away at the HD for about a minute and then it kicked out of the "step-through" mode. ..but removing the mouse and modem from the Device Manager didn't help.
oh well, at least i know [i think] that the monitor's ok.