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AHCI and ACPI for XP on Lenovo Netbook


Dave-H

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Not Bluetooth, it's just the usual cheap wireless USB dongle.
It worked fine in XP on the previous three (!) netbooks I've had, and is fine on Windows 10 now of course.
There are no setting relevant to keyboard or mouse in the BIOS setup, apart from one to set the mode of the F keys (to set whether you have to press the "Fn" button with them or not.)
I don't have a wireless keyboard I'm afraid.
:no:
 

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OK, I've found the problem with the mouse!
The machine has two physical USB ports, one of which is USB2 only, the other is also USB3 capable.
I've now discovered that the mouse works in the USB3 port, but not in the USB2 port (which is one one I want to use it with of course!)
When I finally tried plugging the dongle into the USB3 port, it found all the drivers and works fine.
It does appear as a keyboard as well as a mouse, but that's not unexpected from what I've read.
I installed the drivers manually, I didn't let them install automatically, and on one driver there was the choice to load a mouse or a generic device.
I chose the mouse, and it then completed the drivers and worked.
Unfortunately I can see no way of forcing that when it's plugged into the other port, as it doesn't appear in the mouse section of Device Manager.
I've tested with other devices, and all the other devices work correctly whichever port they're plugged into, so this is a bit of a mystery!
At least I can now use the mouse, although it's not ideal as it's a waste of the USB3 port as it's not a USB3 device.

I have tried all the versions of acpi.sys in the Integrator folder.
None of the earlier ones worked, just producing various flavours of BSOD, but the last few do all work.
None give any more functionality though.
I'm now using the latest one.

There are no less that 13 devices recorded in the System Event Log as having no IRQs available in the BIOS.
I guess the sound hardware must be one of them as there's no trace of it anywhere.

Another oddity is that I have the last XP version of Malwarebytes Premium installed on the machine, and this has suddenly started malfunctioning too.
I'm positive that it was working a couple of days ago, so I don't know what's happened there either.
The Exploit Protection isn't switched on, and won't switch on.
There are two identical errors in the System Event Log which say that the Anti-Exploit service failed start "A device attached to the system is not functioning."
So, yet another ACPI-related problem?
:dubbio:
 

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@Dave-H

Crazy hard work, to get XP SP3 to work on the Flex 10 board.

At the end I get everything to work, only not the graphik driver.

After loong searching in the dark I noticed, that ALL the problems of this board belongs to its DSDT table in Bios.

Intel did all for the Baytrail chipset, that XP and even Win7 and Win8 do not run on it.

After I changed DSDT in Bios (also crazy procedure, because I can do this only with EEPROMER),

the problems are gone

Dietmar

PS: Now I am in Ukraine until 8 of January. Only at home I have this ready modded Bios.

 

 

Edited by Dietmar
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Thanks @Dietmar!
Good to hear from somebody who has first hand experience of this!
If you have a version of the BIOS that will solve this that's brilliant.
Do remember that I want to dual boot with Windows 10 though.
If your modified BIOS version will make Windows 10 unusable that's no good for me I'm afraid.
I'm puzzled that you say that the original BIOS prevented Windows 8 from running on the machine, because surely it was originally designed for Windows 8?
:dubbio:

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@Dietmar

Just a thought.
You said you never got a graphics driver to work on the Flex 10 with XP.
Did you ever try the Intel 3600 driver?
That seems to be a basic generic Intel graphics driver.
I got that to work on the two Asus EeePCs I had with Atom processors.
It was quite basic, no hardware acceleration for instance, but it would drive the HDMI port, and was much better than the Microsoft basic driver.
I couldn't use it on my last Asus notebook as that was AMD based, but I'm hopeful that it might work on the Flex 10 as that is Intel.
That's the last thing though after i've got everything else working as much as possible!
:)

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35 minutes ago, Dave-H said:

I got that to work on the two Asus EeePCs I had with Atom processors.
...
I couldn't use it on my last Asus notebook as that was AMD based, but I'm hopeful that it might work on the Flex 10 as that is Intel.

Now waiting for the time you get your hands on some Ryzen laptop and try to move your XP again, lol :P

Maybe research some ways to port only your files and settings to a new install?

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LOL! :lol:

Just to bore you all with the history, the reason I have these machines is that I like to have a physically small and light unit that I can carry around easily when I'm away.
Those 10.5" screen models all fit nicely in my shoulder bag!
The problem with most of those small netbooks/notebooks is they were very quickly superseded by tablets, so they were never really developed into anything more than very basic computers. Almost all of them are very underpowered for anything other than very basic use.

The first two Asus EeePCs I had were at least proper miniature Intel based laptop computers, with easily changeable external batteries and things like disk activity lights. The second one could be upgraded to 4GB of memory, which helped it a lot, as did fitting an SSD of course.
They were designed for Windows 7, and didn't have high enough resolution screens for Windows 8/8.1 to work properly.

I managed to upgrade to Windows 8 and then 8.1, but a lot of the apps wouldn't work, they just crashed the graphics driver, and those that did work needed a registry hack to fool them into thinking it was a 768 screen instead of a 600 screen, but they looked blurry and distorted. No hope of getting Windows 10 to work.

That's why I then went for the third Asus machine, the AMD based one. That had a touch screen and supported Windows 8.1 and 10.
It was fixed memory (fortunately 4GB was fitted) but was really crawling slow. The problem was the rubbish processor.
Eventually I got so annoyed with it every time I tried to use it, that I looked again for an alternative which was the right size, and still had a conventional HDD or SSD so I could transplant my drive yet again, and came across the Lenovo Flex 10.

I'm actually very pleased with it, it performs a huge amount better on Windows 10 than the last Asus machine did, and the other two performed on Windows 8.1.
It's missing some things that the Asus machines had, like an Ethernet port and SD card slot, and only two USB ports instead of three, but I can live with that.
The touchpad is dreadful, even worse than the ones on the Asus machines, and they were bad enough, but as long as I can use a mouse that's fine.

I do think this machine will be my last as far as small netbooks go, which is why I'm anxious to get everything I can out of it!
Cheers, Dave.
:)

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Isn't there a touch screen on that thing? Maybe try to use it instead. 

 

Another thing i just thought about - examine the device manager in Win10 for any mention of "intel serial io" or "I2C host" or something similar. 

That's an internal bus they started to use recently for various built-in devices. If a lot of devices are missing in XP, it can be explained by the lack of a driver for that bus.

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Yes there is a touchscreen which works fine on Windows 10.
I'm not holding out any hope of it ever working on XP though!
Fortunately I have now managed to sort out the mouse, and it's now working on the other USB2 port where I want it.
I found that in the list of generic "Human Interface Devices" listed in the Device Manager there was one that if the driver was updated manually from a list, the list included a "HID compliant mouse". I selected that and installed it, and the mouse now works! There was an equivalent entry for a "HID compliant keyboard too" which I also installed.
So, we're getting there!
The machine is still not performing at its best on XP as it's only using one processor core, and there is still no sound, but it's now pretty usable.
:yes:
 

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Been trying a few graphics drivers today.
I'm sure nobody will be surprised to hear that I didn't get anywhere!
:no:
I found a couple which did recognise the hardware and did install, but they all produced the "device can't start" Code 10 message.
:(

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17 hours ago, RainyShadow said:

Isn't there a touch screen on that thing? Maybe try to use it instead. 

 

Another thing i just thought about - examine the device manager in Win10 for any mention of "intel serial io" or "I2C host" or something similar. 

That's an internal bus they started to use recently for various built-in devices. If a lot of devices are missing in XP, it can be explained by the lack of a driver for that bus.

Sorry, I should have said. I can't see any mention of devices like that in Windows 10's Device Manager.
:no:

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Just in case anyone was wondering why I've gone quiet for a while, it's because I'm working off-thread with George King on a Windows XP installation package for (relatively) modern machines like this. There are still a lot of issues with it, at least on my machine, but if I can get a new clean XP install that's as functional as it can be, I'll then know what the intrinsic limitations actually are, eliminating anything that's just being caused by me using an existing and already much modified installation.
Where we are at the moment, I'm beginning to think that the only answer to getting all the hardware properly recognised by XP is a modified BIOS, as long as that doesn't break Windows 10!
Cheers, Dave.
:)

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Well, worst case you can try some twisted way of loading like they do for Hackintosh - boot 32-bit Clover => modify ACPI tables in memory (don't ask how, no clue :P ) => chainload some Windows boot loader => boot XP.

 Couple links: 

Clover 32-bit - https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/317521-good-bye-clover-32/

Booting XP from (U)EFI - https://www.betaarchive.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=61&t=20327

 

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Thanks, more food for thought!

One thing I am now certain of after my experiments with George is that this machine will not work properly with XP in ACPI Multiprocessor mode.
I'm having exactly the same problems with his clean installation as I was having with my original installation.
Many USB devices are not detected in multiprocessor mode, and the AHCI driver refuses to work as well.
Those problems all immediately go away if I switch to standard ACPI mode.
What the actual cause is I have no idea, but I suspect it's a resources problem of some sort.
:)

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