2009
07.07
07.07
Symptoms: Windows 2003 hangs after booting and never reach the login screen.
Background: ACPI stands for Advanced Configuration and Power Interface. It is an open standard that defines platform for hardware discovery, configuration, power management and monitoring.
Possible Cause and Resolution
- Cause: CMOS Battery is Dying
Resolution: Goto CMOS setup, scroll to POWER MANAGEMENT SETUP, hit Enter, look at it, Hit ESC to exit, Anwser Y to save.
- Cause: RAID Problem
Resolution:
- Turn off the server.
- Unplug one of the hard disk in your RAID.
- Boot the server. The RAID status now should change to degraded
- You should now be able to see the login screen.
- Login, do the necessary backup
- Plugin the hard disk, rebuild the RAID array with its software
I stopped my search as the solution no 2 solved my problem 
I am still not clear with the exact cause, but I suspect that the RAID controller was having problem synchronizing between hard disks (my server is using RAID-1).
I never comment on these things after finding a solution, but this time after looknig for 2 hours and comping across the SIMPLEST solution that worked perfectly, I needed to. You made my night! Yes, basically break the raid if you have one, remove a disk physically, and then boot. It worked. Run a chkdsk/f, get it to boot again perfectly, and then shut down, re-add the drive and have it resynch. Whalla! Done! Thanks ever so much again. Sometimes people don’t post something that is obvious, and I should have known better myself. Getting stuck and being frustrated it’s easy to overlook. -Mike
Thank YOU. You have made my day
TWO DAYS I’VE BEEN FIGHTING THIS AND YOU SOLVED IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You’re my hero!!!!!!!!
Thanks.
Mike.
man you r great thank u
Well, how about the people who doesn`t have RAIDs on the machine?
All I do have is one IDE HDD and CD-ROM (not RAID, not SATA, not SCSI).
All the symptoms are same – haning before Win 2k3 splash and hangs at acpitabl.dat in Safe Mode. 4 days here dying about the issue.. ;(
Ok I’m gonna give this a bang we have done everything else to try fix this including upgrading Bios, changing some arb filename etc, and nothing has worked, have pretty much killed google searching for something that can work, and then I typed into google
“fix Acpitabl.dat” and got to this page, It’s Sunday and Maybe God is smiling down on me, so I’ll go try and let you know if it worked for me……
Problem is I got Raid 5 and undoing the raid didnt seem to help
I even changed the Bios Batt just in case …. also didnt do much.
Thank you so much!
Saved me from an all nighter!!
Domain controller power supply failed and when I installed new one I hit the same problem. Removed one of the disks and it booted fine!!
Cheers.
Ok just thought I would tell you guys what happened, we took the raid out stuffed it into another computer, and still got the same problem, after 2 days search finally found the drivers for the disc tried to make a boot disc with nlite with the drivers but didint work eventually found a usb external floppy drive, yea floppy drive a: then booted pressed “R” to load the drivers and it worked
we then booted into the win 2k3 cd and ran the second repair from the cd and whooooooohooooooooooooooo it booted………..
Acpitabl.bat was a bitch to fix
You are my HERO. I had the same Acpiabl.dat problem. I pulled a hard drive and did a complete backup. Put the Hard Drive that I backed up in the Server and took the other one out and low and behold it booted. I put the other Hard Drive back in and get the same error though. One Hard Drive and I’m fine. Should I kill the partitions on the second Hard Drive?
John
Had this problem with no RAID after trying to boot up with an (apparently) unsupported USB 2.0 disc plugged in, I just removed the SATA controller I had added into PCI and it booted up into Safe Mode, then put it back in and for some reason it worked again.
I had a IBM HS20 blade do this (it was complaining about low voltage on the battery). Reseated the blade, no go. Tried LKG, no go. Got in a heated debate with IBM about how it’s a hardware issue. Fix? Changed the RTC battery.
My server board was 6 months old. It would eventually boot with 2 TB Hard Drives mirrored. Back to one hard drive after a reboot, same damn issue. Do you guys think it’s the cmos battery. I am out of ideas!
John