acpi shuts my system down so fast, it doesn't get a chance
to save critical system files before it shuts down, results, system registry files "system, and software" get curupted and have to be replaced in order for system to boot correctly...

disable the acpi.

//Silent.

What OS are you running? Ive only heard of that problem in ME...

that is a known problem with Via under Win2K as well. You must only use Restart (power off after post) and not shutdown to avoid the problem. It is supposed to be fixed about the time Win2K SP2 is out, or so I believe.

:}

I must be one of the few lucky people who havent had problems with Via based mobo's. Both of my PCs use are Via-based and run flawlessly.

Just my 2 cents here.

It might be nothing at all to do with ACPI. What you describe are classic symptoms of the cache write-back problem. Most versions of SP2 do not in fact properly update some system files, including two that handle hard disk cache write-back. This means that, when Windows is shut down the first few times, the cached data doesn't get properly written back to the HD and so you get HD corruption. Microsoft acknowledge this as an issue but at present there isn't a fix openly available for it. We'll have to wait for SP3, I'm afraid.

Meanwhile, take a look in Event vIewer to see if there are any errors logged or any warnings about hard disk corruption. For the cache setting (configurable), look in the Properties of your root drive. Also, in Event Viewer look at the Properties of any errors.

Take a look at http://support.microsoft.com/directory/article.asp?ID=KB;EN-US;q281672&FR=1.

Look also at the same address but change the Q number to 290757.