Server Freezing... Is this the cause?

[Howard]

Well a few days ago I woke up in the morning to find my server (Windows Server 2003 Enterprise) completely locked up... Couldn't do anything except reset.
Well it just did it again. I wish I knew what's causing it

However, since I've started using this server, in event viewer/system, there have been these "acpi" errors happening every so often, and appearing in clusters of 4 or 5.

The error is as follows:

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.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

Any idea what this is and how to fix it? And could it be causing my whole system to lock up?

Any help appreciated

[Jonny M]

Tried turning any type of BIOS virus protection off?

[Jiff Lemon]

What sort of hardware you running it on?
May be an idea to change to standard PC instead of ACPI one.

[Howard]

It's an Athlon 700, 256mb ram, AGP graphics of some kind, RealTek and SMC network cards. Nothing that shouldn't support ACPI.
However when I can next restart it, I'll check virus protection is off and then turn off ACPI. Is the BIOS where you do turn off ACPI? No options in Windows?

Will this hopefully cure the freezing?

[eldren]

Turning off ACPI may render your system unbootable, if I recall correctly. Then again, I'm about to passout from sleep deprivation, so I could be waaay, waaaay off.

[Jiff Lemon]

Device manager, under PC type.

You checked to see if theres BIOS updates for your board?

[Howard]

There probably is. I can't actually remember what board it is now I posted here a while ago and we identified it, so I'll look for the thread tomorrow and do it

[DR]

Crikey - you must be loaded to afford that license

[Jiff Lemon]

Trial version - Quite a few people doing it at the mo.

Can't see why as its more than most people will ever need (says the man with his own rack......)

[DR]

Pics of the rack?

[Jiff Lemon]

Crappy pic but I'm sure you get the idea....

[Howard]

Well I disabled the virus protection thing in the BIOS, so hopefully that'll stop those illegal address things.

Also I noticed that the ram (what looks like some sort of timing settings) were all set to "SDRAM 8/10ms" or something. But when I set them to normal the system hangs at the POST, so I just reverted them back to what they were... Odd

[Howard]

Well I've got 4 more "acpi" errors, this time saying:

AMLI: ACPI BIOS is attempting to read from an illegal IO port address (0x71), which lies in the 0x70 - 0x71 protected address range. This could lead to system instability. Please contact your system vendor for technical assistance.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

But no freeze-up yet

[Jiff Lemon]

Bios update?

[Howard]

Well just updated the Bios (which added some nice Energy Star logos to my post screen ) and booted back into Windows and it still seems the acpi errors are still happening and messages about "parity error on device/ide0" which is probably beacuse that IDE channel doesn't actually work, but hey.

[Jonny M]

Can you disable the stuff that doesn't work in the BIOS?