acpi.sys keyboard issues

[Guest dynamo52]

Hi everybody,

 

I am having a problem with an HP Pavilion laptop model # hzd7168cl. I

will note that his is a multiboot system and this issue is present in

2000, XP, and Vista, but not DOS 6.22, Ubuntu, Suse, or even OS X (yes

you read that right, I have 7 bootable systems on this machine). For

the purpose of simplification, I will limit this post to XP Pro as it

is my primary system. The issue is that the onboard keyboard and

touchpad stop responding intermittently. For example, as I type,

every few seconds a few letters are dropped completely. Needless to

say that this is very infuriating as I have to constantly reenter/

correct text input. As to the touchpad, it simply stops responding

and then resumes. The issue does not occur with an external mouse.

This interruption is accompanied by a faint grinding noise similar to

the sound an optical drive makes when it finds a bad sector. This

system has all updated BIOS and drivers and the OS is fully updated

and patched.

 

I have searched for many, many hours over several months and found

newsgroups where people have mentioned similar issues, but none has

suggested a cause much less a solution. Finally, after nearly going

insane with rage and on the verge of simply purchasing a new machine

even though I really didn't want to, I started going through through

every single process and service and disabling them one by one. To my

chagrin, even with only essential processes running, the issue

remained. I started analyzing the remaining processes an found

through process explorer that the System itself would draw a tiny

percentage of the CPU apparently simultaneously with these

interruptions. I opened the properties and found that the thread

responsible was ACPI.sys+0x10b57 I have conclusively proven this to

be the case as suspending the thread allows for normal operation of

the keyboard. After determining this, I recall that this issue may

have arisen at about the time I updated the BIOS for this system but I

am not certain.

 

All of this brings me to the question at hand. Does anybody know of a

way to remove the keyboard and touchpad from the ACPI name space or if

there might be a better solution. The workaround I have developed is

to simply suspend the thread as mentioned above. This is however a

clumsy procedure as I have to open process explorer upon logging in,

and if I forget to resume the process before shutting down, XP freezes

at the Windows is shutting down screen and I have to kill the system

with the power button. Also, I am not certain if any other onboard

devices are affected though I have not found any to date.

 

Any suggestions are appreciated. One idea I did have is to downgrade

the BOIS but I have been unable to find any previous BIOS versions

(current version is Phoenix BIOS: F.34 released 7/12/2004).