After 3 months of use my PC has suddenly developed a non-automated shutdown, ie. i have to push the power button now,
in response to the message "It is now safe to turn off your PC".
The motherboard is Soltek and the OS is WinXP Home.
I tried re-installing the OS only to find i got the message
"BIOS has a non compliant ACPI".
Pressing <F7> gets around this, and allows the OS to install
okay, but i still have the same power down message at the
end.
Also, with no ACPI installed now i have no way of re-configuring
the power to automatically shutdown. I'm stuck in a catch22
situation. The APM bit i was looking for is usually in Control Panel and/or Device Manager, Hidden Devices etc.
I flashed the BIOS with the 2 updates from the motherboard
website, but still had the same problem.
Am i looking in the wrong place entirely for the solution to
this fault?

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ACPI is enabled in BIOS. If it somehow got turned off there you'll get that message. Sometimes changing that setting will require reinstalling Windows.