[rwc1969]

I still haven't sorted it out, but figured I'd post this link for anyone else who may have a similar problem. http://forum.sysinternals.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=837 There is a lot of good info relating to High DPCs and hardware interrupts consuming up to 100% of CPU.

I will try disabling the HPET in BIOS. I did disable the integrated sound, LAN and FDC in BIOS to no avail.

[rwc1969]

No option for HPET in BIOS. There is an option for multicore processing, considering this is a celeron I wonder if it should be disabled? There's an option for RAID vs. IDE as well, but I only have one HDD so I'm guessing it should be set to IDE. I have no clue!

[Carbon]

Neither do I. :/

At this point I would RMA the motherboard but obviously that's a pretty drastic solution.

[rwc1969]

Definitely can't do that, if so I'd just build a new system altogether. Maybe keep the case, LOL!

I figured I'd start from scratch and reinstall from the dell vista 32bit setup dvd disk. That failed because the system wouldn't shut down after the initial required restart. Got a BSOD instead! Drive_power_state_failure. Stop 0x0000009f (0x00000003, 0x80b58c78, 0x80c4d790, 0x819e6008) I couldn't find anything Vista specific for this stop code. So, I reformatted and reinstalled again using the other Dell supplied Vista dvd disk, 32 bit sp1. For some reason Dell supplied 2 disks. One labeled Vista 32bit and the other labeled Vista 32bit sp1. I got the exact same results with a slightly different 0x9f stop code. Then,I tried repairing vista using the supplied sp1 disk, same result w' a slightly different 0x9f stop code again. Plus it now showed 2 instances of Vista on C drive. That is strange, because I reformatted C after every reinstall.

So then the system would not turn off and would never fully boot. After the initial scrolling windows bar at the bottom I would just get a black screen with a blinking cursor in the upper left corner of the screen.

I then tried using the Dell recovery partition again to restore to factory default, but couldn't access it from BIOS. Found an article on how to manually do this from the elevated command prompt in BIOS boot options. So, I managed to get the system restored once again to the factory default.

Upon the initial restart an error box popped up and stated Rundll32.exe "windows cannot access the specified device, path or file. You may not have the appropriate permissions to access the system."

this jogged my memory and I now recall getting that same error box after the initial install way back in September 'ish and again a week or so back when I reinstalled from Dell partition to factory default.

At this point the system is back to the point when I first started this thread. I looked into the rundll32 error and couldn't find it in the appropriate folder in Windows. So, I ran sfc /scannow from an elevated command prompt. The process took over 4 hours and it stated when finished. "found errors and couldn't repair some of the files" or something to the like. I researched that and it was stated that upon restart sfc /scannow usually fixes them. I checked after restart and the rundll32.exe file is now in the system32 folder along with many more that weren't there before I ran sfc /scannow.

This makes me think that the factory default install is missing many files. The system will now shutdown and restart on it's own, but it takes 10 minutes or longer to do so. It pretty much takes 10 minutes to do any one task. i.e. opening "computer", "C:", "Windows", "system32". I no longer get the bluescreen error code 0x9f, or the rundll32.exe pop up box when I restart.

On the previous factory default restore I updated my video, sound and lan drivers to the latest available with no results. In fact the latest Intel chipset driver kept giving me a "Vista" pop up asking me to run in legacy mode, so I went to Dell and got their latest driver update which was an earlier version, the pop up went away. As of now all drivers are factory default. Other than running sfc /scannow the system is as it was the day I bought it.

The thing I don't understand is why Ubuntu live won't run and even the restores from dvd disk took forever and failed. I'm starting to think the driver for, dvd-rom or psu to dvd is defective. What gets me even more is the fact that every error I've researched eventually leads to a Microsoft website that states the problem was in an earlier version of Windows, nothing specific to Vista, and that the problem was corrected with XP sp2 or the like.

[Carbon]

If all those things are happening outside of WIndows then the underlying fault is with hardware, not software. It sounds like a faulty motherboard to me.

[rwc1969]

It's a Dell/ foxconn g33mo2 motherboard and I think you are right. It seems they had some firmware issues. I updated the BIOS to the latest Dell provides and it still doesn't work. something to do with ACPI not functioning properly. ACPI.SYS overwhelms the cpu with hardware interrupts and DPCs making it impossible for anything else to access the cpu. ACPI.SYS is the driver for "Microsoft ACPI-compatible system" in Device Manager. I've tried disabling and uninstalling this device, but Vista just re-installs it automatically upon reboot.

Thanks everyone for the help.

[rwc1969]

Here's how I got the system working! http://forum.sysinternals.com/forum_...=104180#104180