ACPI Mode vs Standard PC Mode

Hello:
I was wondering if any of you computer sequencing and audio folks have
come across drivers for gear that wouldn't install correctly. i.e. a usb
midi interface whereby hardware conflicts in the control panel prevent proper installation of device. More specifically, in what is called ACPI mode (win2k here), the pc indicates that all drivers are on one interrupt (IRQ 9 in my case), when actually what is happening is that the pc is automatically allocating the interrupts as virtual IRQs. The downside is that you cannot (apparently) change these IRQs manually and if there is an installation problem, then your stuck. After speaking with a tech from manufacturer of said device, he told me that I should convert to standard PC mode in the control panel of op system. This way the IRQs will go back to being PnP style which are physical not virtual IRQs and they can be manually configured and there are 24. After doing a little research, I found that they don't recommend (from microsoft website)
changing what they call the Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) from ACPI to Standard PC and vica versa, and if so, only by reinstalling the op system with Standard PC mode selected: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q237556And the of course, you must reload the drivers for all your devices.
Can anyone shed light on this--is it preferable to alot of you folks to operate in Standard PC mode instead of ACPI mode or is the tech giving me an excuse to cover up the fact that their current drivers won't install in my PC, and then is this the definition if incompatibility. I think that the drivers of devices should be written to be able to adapt to changes in PC architecture, or am I asking too much?
I thought this was an interesting question to raise about some details in our platform's background that are often overlooked.
Thanks for listening.
pianimal

You may want to post this in the Windows forum. I have heard as much about Standard PC mode. I installed my soft synth PC in that mode because of what I've read. I believe Cakewalk will back what you've been told as well (I think I first read it on their news server). Can't tell you why. I think it sucks seeing as most people will hear about it after it is too late, but Standard PC seems to be what is required for our world to function properly.

Thanks TeeCee, I will check cakewalk site and others and possibly post to
windows forum. I better find all my drivers disks or start surfing for drivers or both.

Hello:
I also posted this to the sequencing forum and was suggested to repost here--because it actually pertains more to operating wth windows 2k than to midi interfaces per se...
I was wondering if any of you computer sequencing and audio folks have
come across drivers for gear that wouldn't install correctly. i.e. a usb
midi interface whereby hardware conflicts in the control panel prevent proper installation of device. More specifically, in what is called ACPI mode (win2k here), the pc indicates that all drivers are on one interrupt (IRQ 9 in my case), when actually what is happening is that the pc is automatically allocating the interrupts as virtual IRQs. The downside is that you cannot (apparently) change these IRQs manually and if there is an installation problem, then your stuck. After speaking with a tech from manufacturer of said device, he told me that I should convert to standard PC mode in the control panel of op system. This way the IRQs will go back to being PnP style which are physical not virtual IRQs and they can be manually configured and there are 24. After doing a little research, I found that they don't recommend (from microsoft website)
changing what they call the Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) from ACPI to Standard PC and vica versa, and if so, only by reinstalling the op system with Standard PC mode selected: http://support.microsoft.com/defaul...b;en-us;Q237556And the of course, you must reload the drivers for all your devices.
Can anyone shed light on this--is it preferable to alot of you folks to operate in Standard PC mode instead of ACPI mode or is the tech giving me an excuse to cover up the fact that their current drivers won't install in my PC, and then is this the definition if incompatibility. I think that the drivers of devices should be written to be able to adapt to changes in PC architecture, or am I asking too much?
I thought this was an interesting question to raise about some details in our platform's background that are often overlooked.
Thanks for listening.
pianimal

As a followup to this, I recently made the switch from ACPI mode to Standard Mode. The results were that all my drivers reloaded pretty seemlessly. Some had to be "guided" to their respective locations, but when complete, viewing of the IRQ structure revealed the actual IRQ that the devices were using, and also resolved a host of conflict issues
regarding Midi interface, MOTU audio (PCI) interface as well as USB host controller. Standard PC mode is definitely the way to go.
pianimal

Please check the knowledge base section of our website at the link located below, this should address your concerns.
http://www.sweetwater.com/support/ts/detail.php?index=14595&skip=2&max=1&keyword=ACPI

Windows 2000 needs to be in Standard Mode for music application. However, you can save yourself a huge headache by backing everything up and upgrading to Win XP Professional! I used to use Win2K recently and was using Standard Mode, but XP is rock solid for music, and I was very skeptical of XP at first. The driver support is excellent as well, and best of all, you don't need to run XP in Standard mode! In fact, some manufcaturers recommend against running XP in Standard Mode.
Everything is working great for me in XP, using Sonar 2 XL, Softsynths such as FM-7, M-Audio Delta 1010 with WDM driver, Emagic AMT 8, etc.