System Freezes - ATK0110 ACPI UTILITY

[Kuky]

I've had bit of struggle with my system randomly freezing up every now and then, it could do it while in game, sometimes even if I am just browsing internet and no major applications running... I thought possible cause was from either my overclock settings, BIOS settings, video card, PSU playing up... you name it... until I came across some forums where some windows guru helped one guy with same issue.

 

I gave it a crack and I think it solved my issues with system freezing up. It turned out there's this ATK0110 ACPI UTILITY driver which was older version and needed update. Running Windows Update did not find any latest drivers so I always thought I have the latest one... until this

 

So story short, look in your C:\Windows\System32\Drivers directory for a file names ASACPI.sys and check date modified, it should be at least from year 2009 or 2010, in my case (and this guy with same issues) the file was from year 2005.

 

I have no idea what this driver is for, but apparently the old version from 2005 its known for causing system instabilities.

 

In Windows Device Manager under System Deviced this ASACPI.sys driver is driver for ATK0110 ACPI UTILITY

 

I got the later version (year 2009) from ASUS website, from motherboard utilities update packs... when extracted somewhere on the HDD there will be a same ASACPI.sys file which should be used to update this ATK0110 ACPU UTILITY driver... simply check to update driver in Device Manager and point to the new ASACPI.sys (I've attached the file on the bottom) and update it.

 

What I have done on my end is uninstall the device in Device Manager first, then deleted the old C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\ASACPI.sys file, then refreshed Device Manager to look for new hardware, then when new Unknown Device shows up, browse to the new ASACPI.sys file and that was it.

 

So if in case you check on your HDD and you also have this ASACPI.sys file in C:\Windows\System32\Drivers directory and this file is dated from before 2009/2010 make sure you update it as above... it helped me solve these instability issues.

 

EDIT1: this files seems to be for ASUS motherboards only and seems to be part of AI Booster. I don't have AI Booster installed and have no idea what its for, but when I installed Windows this ATK0110 ACPI UTILITY was installed by windows update I think. So if you don't have this file on your C drive in location specified above, you don't have to worry about it

 

EDIT2: FYI if you read this thread further you will see my system freezes were actually caused by OCZ Vertex2/3 SSD firmware... updating SSD firmware and now for 5 days in a row I did not get any more system instability/freezes.

Edited January 3, 2012 by Kuky

[bumfire]

It asus over clocking tool kuky

[Kuky]

got my hopes up too early... yesterday and today I got this freeze again, both times was while playing FC2... I've just updated my motherboard BIOS also so I hope maybe this will finally solve it.

[HiJack]

Kuky! Are you on nVIDIA graphic card? Try rolling back to an older nVIDIA driver version! Check this thread:

 

http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=83432

 

(HJ)

[Mustang]

No, i believe Kuky is on an AMD card (5870 i think)

[Kuky]

I use HD5870 as Mustang said... I am very frustrated about these freezes and I still don't know what is causing them. I am also suspecting the 2 SSD and tonight I got to update their firmware also but while playing with all this now for some reason when ever I connect the 2 SSD on SATA3 controller, the drivers don't initialize properly and takes about 1-2min till they do and I've never seen this before... if I change the controller to IDE they boot straight away, changing it back to AHCI (which is what I had them on straight away when I bought 1st SSD) they initialize very long again.... really WTF?

 

Now I change the controller and use Intel SATA2 ports and have it on AHCI and DVDR on SATA3 controller as IDE and they all boot quick... I am out of ideas... I'm on the wirge of going for OS reinstall but I really don't want to have to that again as it's such a pain to reinstall everything and set everything up the way I like... damn these PCs!

 

EDIT: tonight I had another system freeze... when I pressed CTRL-ALT-DEL I got error message saying:

 

Windows Logon: Logon.exe - Bad Image

C:\Windows\System32\UIAutomationCore.dll crashed or something

 

Normally when I get this freeze and press CTRL-ALT-DEL I get screen saying "applying Security Options" and nothing happens... I've seen many poeple on the forums say they have same freezes and when pressing CTRL-ALT-DEL they get same message and same as me, nothing responds any more and I have to do hard reset but this time I got message above... looked on the net and found again quite a few saying they have crashes but mostly from FSX and that UIAutomqationCore.dll is used by FSX but I don't have FSX installed.

 

I'm thinking trying out if setting SSD to run as IDE for a while.... but or now since I've done their firmware upgrade now I'll wait and see if the freeze still happen

Edited December 29, 2011 by Kuky

[HiJack]

Have you reset your BIOS to factory after flashing? (F6 in menu I think)

 

EDIT: Update BIOS for SSD also!

[Kuky]

Have you reset your BIOS to factory after flashing? (F6 in menu I think)

 

EDIT: Update BIOS for SSD also!

 

 

yes I've set BIOD Defaults first... rebooted... then updated BIOS (motherboard) then rebooted, reset BIOS to defaults again, rebooted then changed all the BIOS settings as before... tonight I updated SSD firmware also, with this OCZ toolboz I don't have an option to update BIOS, only firmware?

[HiJack]

yes, firmware was the gig. You must check OCZ support forum if this continues, if support forum exists, dont know.

 

How long have you had the SSD? And there is a status button on the SSD tool, does it indicates errors with the disk?

 

(HJ)

[Kuky]

I've had the SSD for a few months already, first I got the Vertex2, then another Vertex2 3.5" (put 1stoneit small PC I e for work), then got Vertex3, maybe 6 months since I bought the Vertex2 3.5" that I have in my PC now.

 

Now which SSD tool you talking about? From OCZ Toolbox I see this:

[Kuky]

wow, I just noticed another thing... before I upgraded SSD- fimware when ever look in RealTemp the CPU load would never be 0 (or close to 0) and would always show at least 6-7% utilization even if there are no applications running, only RealTemp... now the CPU load on idle with RealTemp running only is 0.6% :) So either the SSD were not working well because of crappy firmware (as I read on some forums people having issues with them and needing firmware upgrade) or, it's my motherboard SATA3 controller that has an issue?

 

I will leave the SSD of Intel SATA2 ports for the moment see if I still get the freezes, if not... I might try putting them back on SATA3 ports... anyway, at least RealTemp shows now proper idle CPU utilization :)

 

Thanks all for helping out

Edited December 29, 2011 by Kuky

[HiJack]

I've had the SSD for a few months already, first I got the Vertex2, then another Vertex2 3.5" (put 1stoneit small PC I e for work), then got Vertex3, maybe 6 months since I bought the Vertex2 3.5" that I have in my PC now.

 

Now which SSD tool you talking about? From OCZ Toolbox I see this:

Thats the one ;) and the disk log looks OK.

[Kuky]

So, I've had my PC on whole day yesterday... I was flying in one mission online (FC2) for about 2.5h and I did not get this freeze yet. Now I am confident that the SSD firmware was the cause after all. I've now even overclocked my CPU to 4.2GHz on less voltage then what I had when I had it on 4GHz from the day I bought it till now so things are looking good... I'm not ruling out possibility that I will get the freeze again as you never know... but so far so good...

[HiJack]

Glad you seams to have fixed it Kuky! :thumbsup:

[Kuky]

One more day passed and still no freeze... also I connected the 2x SSD back to Marvell SATA3 6GB/s controller again and it's working fine... so far so good :D

 

I tested last night also weather connecting the OCZ Vertex2 3.5" SSD to SATA2 port made any difference in speed and I have found it does... now maybe it was because I had SATA2 ports set as IDE and SATA3 as AHCI, anyway, on SATA2 (IDE) I had about 182MB/s read speed and on SATA3 (AHCI) about 240MB/s read speed. The Vertex3 SSD has about 385MB/s read on SATA3 (AHCI) port... tool I used to test was Sisoft Sandra Lite

[HiJack]

Good to know!

[Kuky]

Well it's been more then a week now since I upgraded SSD firmware and I did not get any more freezes, I am calling this problem definitely solved :)