> I've heard rumors that you can start the install on another (compliant)
> machine, or VM, and then switch the drive back into the non-compliant machine
> to finish the installation.
>
> I just don't want to run Vista badly enough to bother.
>
> "wyocowboy" wrote:
>
> > After spending a few fruitless hours trying to upgrade a Toshiba Satellite
> > A35-S159 from XP to Vista HP, I found that both the MS Vista Upgrade Advisor
> > and the Vista upgrade install that is launched from within XP falsely
> > indicate that this upgrade is possible. If you proceed, you will be greeted
> > with an 0x000000A5 blue screen informing you that the BIOS is not fully ACPI
> > compliant, even though you have the latest and supposedly greatest BIOS, v1.8
> > for this model, which was built in 2003.
> >
> > To isolate it to the BIOS, I swapped out the customer's hard drive for a
> > known good one, booted from the Vista DVD and got the same error at the end
> > of the initial text-mode "copying files" phase. Since Toshiba is famous for
> > using proprietary power management in its laptops, I suspect that they are
> > using proprietary ACPI extensions in the Phoenix BIOS and Vista setup has a
> > problem with this. Unlike Win2k/XP, there does not appear to be the
> > opportunity to press F7 to disable loading the ACPI hal overlay - I tried it
> > anyways during the "copying files" phase and no joy.
> >
> > Since I was not aware that Vista was pickier about ACPI implementations that
> > XP, I didn't go looking beforehand, but if you go to Toshiba's website, there
> > is a list of machines that will support upgrading to Vista, at:
> >
> >
http://www.csd.toshiba.com/cgi-bin/tais/su/su_sc_modSel.jsp?project=vista&BV_UseBVCookie=yes> >
> > Since Vista setup obviously can detect problems with the ACPI implementation
> > when it gets to that point, I wonder why this check has not been added to the
> > Upgrade Advisor, or to the compatibility check phase of setup that is
> > launched from within the previous version of windows.
> >
> > ----------------
> > This post is a suggestion for Microsoft, and Microsoft responds to the
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> > Agree" button in the message pane. If you do not see the button, follow this
> > link to open the suggestion in the Microsoft Web-based Newsreader and then
> > click "I Agree" in the message pane.
> >
> >
http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/en-us/default.mspx?mid=001f885d-3402-4f8a-9c00-d5cad97a676f&dg=microsoft.public.windows.vista.installation_setup