[PLUG] another windows annoyance

[Matthew Henkler]

Another interesting "tidbit" about Windows is that if you switch it in
or out of ACPI mode, you have to completely reinstall the operating
system to get an ACPI compatible kernel (or the one that doesn't support
ACPI), which is probably why it kept rebooting on you when you disabled
it.  I think its pretty dumb to have to reinstall the OS just to get
ACPI working (or turning it off).

There are a lot of buggy BIOSes out there that don't fully support ACPI
under Windows 2k correctly, which might be why you where having problems
with the fan.  Did you try updating the BIOS on the motherboard?

Not that I'm pro-windows or anything, but I have encountered a few
problems like this before (though none so dangerous as a fan turning
off)...

matt henkler

"Christopher N. Deckard" wrote:
> 
> Ok, so I have my friend's computer here.  It is going through a rebuild
> phase at the moment.  Going to give her a fresh view of Linux.  Problem
> is, she needs Windows too.  I'll convert her I promise.
> 
> But here goes my woes for the evening...  I put Windows 2000 on it last
> week.  Been trying to wade through all the reboots and all of the
> patches for the different apps (the service pack for Visual Studio is
> about 140MB.)  Problem is, I'd be downloading a patch and the thing
> would just lock.  Nothing crashing or anything else.  Well, I thought
> that I had narrowed it down to a hardware problem.  I had read that when
> Intel CPUs overheat they just stop doing anything to keep themselves
> from becoming a big ball of fire.  Well, the CPU fan wasn't moving at
> all.  I figured it had burnt itself up.
> 
> Well, I took the fan off the proc and tested it with a 9 volt battery.
> Worked fine for me, and got a nice little wind through my hair.  Plugged
> the proc back in, minus the fan, and plugged the fan into the fan header
> on the mobo.  Turned it on and watched.  The fan kicked on, and I
> watched.  Made it all the way through the bios post, made it through the
> second ide controller post, loaded the win2k kernel and started to boot.
>   About half a second into the win2k boot, the fan spins down.
> If that doesn't scare you as much as it did me, well, go buy an AMD
> proc, install win2k, and let your cpu overheat into a flaming processor
> of death.  Luckily intel cpus have a failsafe in case of overheating,
> AMD doesn't...
> 
> A short side note, turning of ACPI in the bios just didn't do anything.
>   In fact, it freaked out win2k enough that when it gets to that point
> in its boot, it just reboots the computer.  Very strange...
> 
> So anyway, I just decided to bypass the fan header all together and
> soldered the power and ground to the power and ground of the other case
> fan.  Now the computer is a happy camper.
> 
> Note that I don't think it did this under Win98 which ran for months
> with no problems.
> 
> So it works now.  I just thought that I'd let everyone know one other
> reason not to use windows.  I'm really contemplating skipping the ssh
> talk just to ask in front of a bunch of microsoft weanies why Windows
> 2000 turns off the cpu fan and causes overall badness.
> 
> Any flames about using windows can be sent to /dev/null.
> 
> -Chris
> 
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