3

I have a Dell Inspiron 3050 desktop (one of the little mini square PCs) which I'm trying to put some version of Windows on.

I'm able to load various Linux flavors, but when I try Windows, I get a blue screen with "The BIOS in this system is not fully ACPI compliant".

This happens on Windows 7, Server 2008R2, Vista, and XP, and happens both with a USB DVD drive and with a USB flash drive installation.

I'd be happy to upgrade the BIOS if I could - I have the exe from Dell's site for the latest, which I'm not even sure if it's different from mine, but since I can't get any Windows to load, I can't run it.

It won't run in Wine on Linux.

I can't boot to FreeDOS - I get "Remove disks or other media. Press any key to restart."

I've tried the "press F7 instead of F6 in the XP setup" solution - that gets me through the text-based installation but then blue-screens anyway.

The original recovery partition on this machine is toast - I lost that a long time ago, so I can't restore the emergency recovery OS.

My system is set for Legacy mode - whenever I try UEFI, I can't get a bootable USB drive to get recognized, regardless of whether I made it with unetbootin, Tuxboot, or Diskpart with manual copying. When I'm manually building the USB drives, I format them with FAT32 on MBR.

Is there some way I can boot to a command prompt or something with a Windows install disc, long enough to try to update the BIOS? Or any other way to get around this error message?

I'm not very good with boot stuff, so if you've got a complex answer, I'd really appreciate if you could dumb it down for me a bit.

Improve this question
6
  • Use Windows 8 or newer in UEFI mode only. If you make your Windows installation USB with the official tool it will boot perfectly in UEFI mode with or without Secure Boot.
    – user772515
    Apr 3, 2018 at 20:43
  • @MichaelBay I'll see if I can get a copy of Windows 8 or 10 - all I have at the moment are XP, Vista, 7, and 2008R2, but I'm sure I can get a copy. So if I do get that, and assuming I still get the blue screen during install, does 8 or 10 have a way of getting to the command line earlier than 7, so I can upgrade the BIOS?
    – Joe Enos
    Apr 3, 2018 at 21:06
  • You don't have BIOS, you have what replaces it and it's called UEFI. No update needed (at least not because of the misleading error message). Legacy mode is there for compatibility but it often results in such errors. UEFI is the standard and has been for almost a decade. Learn it, embrace it and stop living in the past.
    – user772515
    Apr 3, 2018 at 21:55
  • @MichaelBay I'm not using Legacy by choice - it's the only way I can get my USB drives or DVD drive to even get recognized at boot. If I set UEFI mode, then they don't even show up in the boot options, no matter how I build them, at least with the OS's that I've tried (Windows through 7, Ubuntu, CentOS, Lubuntu, Xubuntu, Mint). Maybe it'll be different with Windows 10 - I'll know tonight when I try. But as I said, i'm not great with boot stuff, so it's possible I'm doing something wrong there. Or maybe there's something actually wrong with my machine that's not a software/firmware issue.
    – Joe Enos
    Apr 3, 2018 at 22:16
  • As @MichaelBay suggested in the comments, I installed Windows 10, switching over to UEFI instead of Legacy, and it installed successfully. If you want to make that an answer, I'll accept it, since it's 2018, and it seems like a reasonable solution that Windows 7 is no longer a real option. I don't have a resolution to my actual issue, since I still don't know if I can go back and downgrade to Windows 7 - but I'm not going to now, so I suppose I'll never know.
    – Joe Enos
    Apr 4, 2018 at 15:00

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
1

I also encountered the same error when trying to install Windows 7.

This is what I have done:

  1. Go to BIOS. Opening it varies on every device. A simple search on the web will help you find how to go to BIOS.
  2. Under Advanced > OS Version, it was selected to Windows 10, which then I replaced it to Windows 7.

After saving BIOS configuration, I tried installing it again, and I never encountered the error, and the installation was done successfully.

Improve this answer
2
  • What model computer was this?
    – music2myear
    Jun 26, 2018 at 16:37
  • I can confirm that this worked for me on an Asus machine.
    – BritishWerewolf
    Aug 5, 2019 at 7:56
-1

-> Next: get CD-ROM Initialization : Why?: and USB-Disk Detection has to find a USB-To_CDROM Temporary Disk Initializer Driver and go why to INSTALL ok we Want USB to FLOPPY and USB to CDROM: these two to three drivers for usb storage device in that *specific ORDER: will get MSDOS 6.22 Up and Running?: when you loaded freedos here let me get it for you FDCONFIG.SYS: i have one that doesnt error(uses the intel management engine chipset processor and bios like a pii difference between a p4 right because piii has the itanium slot type:) or bug : k why its still bugging i dont know let me examine the disk drive here: see it says is good for what? a installers bootloader but why dont we --fallback here and see where it says its saying while you guys are these people here are gonna take it and learn everything they can from it: butll only say -> The Manual Please: like Usability i want to know how to get my system back to a normal state with it: is this little line here: DOS=HIGH,UMB and: DEVICE=C:\FREEDOS\DRIVERS\JEMM386.EXE B=4000 D=128 EMX FRAME=E000 PGE RAM S=D000-D7FF VPCI VDS VME ;When its INSTALLED that lines OK <- while its in boot from disk form: DEVICE=C:\FREEDOS\DRIVERS\JEMM386.EXE EMX RAM S=D000-D7FF VPCI VDS VME and wont press esc on screen on (intel management engine type bios machine is a sandy bridge) :

DEVICEHIGH=C:\FREEDOS\DRIVERS\XMGR.SYS

DEVICE=C:\FREEDOS\DRIVERS\USBASPI.SYS /W /V

;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;:

!COUNTRY=001,858:\FREEDOS\BIN\COUNTRY.SYS !LASTDRIVE=Z !BUFFERS=20 !FILES=40

DOS=HIGH,UMB DOSDATA=UMB

DEVICE=\FREEDOS\BIN\HIMEMX.EXE

;MEMORY MANAGER: ;DEVICE=C:\FreeDOS\BIN\JEMMEX.EXE NOEMS X=TEST I=TEST NOVME NOINVLPG DEVICE=C:\FreeDOS\BIN\HIMEMX.EXE

;PCI AND MEMORY CONTROLLER DRIVER DEVICE=C:\FREEDOS\DRIVERS\UMBPCI.SYS DEVICE=C:\FREEDOS\DRIVERS\XMGR.SYS /W

;MEMORY MANAGER: ;DEVICE=C:\FREEDOS\DRIVERS\JEMM386.EXE I=8000-B7FF X=C800-EFFF NOEMS DEVICE=C:\FREEDOS\DRIVERS\JEMM386.EXE B=4000 D=128 EMX FRAME=E000 PGE RAM S=D000-D7FF VPCI VDS VME ;DEVICE=C:\FREEDOS\DRIVERS\JEMM386.EXE D=64 EMX SB

DEVICE=C:\FREEDOS\DRIVERS\XHDD.SYS /S10 /H /O

;USB ASPI:UHCI/OHCI = 1.1 EHCI = 2.0 IS DI1000DD.SYS ;DEVICE=C:\FREEDOS\DRIVERS\DI1000DD.SYS DEVICE=C:\FREEDOS\DRIVERS\USBASPI.SYS /W /V

;DEVICEHIGH IS FOR SPECIFYING A SPECIFIC PERIPHERAL: DEVICEHIGH=C:\FREEDOS\DRIVERS\UIDE.SYS /S500 /D:CDROM1 DEVICEHIGH=C:\FREEDOS\DRIVERS\RDISK.COM /S250 DEVICEHIGH=C:\FREEDOS\DRIVERS\XMGR.SYS

;ENABLE USB MOUSE LOGITECH MOUSE SUPPORT: ;DEVICE=C:\FREEDOS\DRIVERS\USBMOUSE.COM ;DEVICEHIGH=C:\FREEDOS\BIN\CTMOUSE.EXE

SHELLHIGH=\FREEDOS\BIN\COMMAND.COM \FREEDOS\BIN /E:2048 /P=\FDAUTO.BAT

Improve this answer
1
  • 2
    As it’s currently written, your answer is unclear. Please edit to add additional details that will help others understand how this addresses the question asked. You can find more information on how to write good answers in the help center.
    – Community Bot
    Jun 29, 2023 at 14:49

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .