irq conflict

[nighthawk]

i installed a new soudcard and i am getting some conflics. what do you do when this happens. it is being shared by another. i figured this by reading the book but it does not give an answer on what to do to fix it.

[lonewolf]

1st, go into your BIOS (usually F1, F2 or Delete at boot)
In one of the sections (usually PCI-related) find "PLUG & PLAY O/S" and make sure that says "YES".

Save the changes and reboot your computer.

In the Control Panel, open SYSTEM

Open the device manager and see if your card is listed with a yellow question mark.

If so, highlight the card and click "remove".

Reboot it to see if plug & pray finds it and reinstalls it properly.

[nighthawk]

ive tried that and many other things. every time i fix one thing i get another problem. right now it is as tho im running a 500 mhz system. it just dont want to do anything. the graffics card farts out just by scrolling and my two cd drives and the ata controller whatever that does are showing conficts.

do you think if i format and pull all my cards and install them one by one i might figure out what is wrong.

i have a feeling it is a bios problem.

[onegunguitar]

ask torn and frayed,he's a computer whiz

[lonewolf]

You need to chart all your IRQs to see what's available.

If you have serial ports and are not using them, you should disable them in BIOS to free up more IRQs. If they are on an old-fashioned I/O board, disable them there.

Also, take a look at your "slot" boards and see if any have jumpers for setting the IRQ. If they do, see if you can change them to suit your needs.

In BIOS, check the PCI settings to see if they are automatic or if they are assigned. If they are assigned, try changing the assignment to suit your needs.

Unfortunately, 500Mhz machines are "plug and pray" vintage. I doubt that a fresh install would make much difference with some of the older hardware. If you are going to spend money on this problem, I would use it to by a new computer.

[bsaller]

What OS are you using? Did you have a soundcard in the computer before? If you had an integrated sound device you need to disable it in the BIOS.
Hopes this helps.

[nighthawk]

let me give you the sytem details. biostar m7ncg 400 motherboard socket a 2700+ amd. 1 gig corsair dual channel ram. radion 9600 xp 128mb apg video. lynxis 10/100/1000 network card. m-audio delta 1010lt soundcard 80gig and 40 gig hard drives. two plextore dvd drives. only one burns. flopy. xp home

i used the bios and disabled the onboard sound.

when i said about the 500 mghz system i meant that it is running like one. its moving slower than a sytem that is loaded down with adware. the prosessor maxes out whenever i open up explorer.

whenever i go into the bios the selections it has is automatic and manual. whenever you go to manual you have the choice of (if i can remember correctly) reserving.

if i make any sort of chages it causes my sytem to share the irq's accross even more devises. right now the sound card is sharing on (pci) 3 along with nvidia nforce pci system management and the vidieo is sharing on (pci) 5 along with standard openhcb host usb controler.

in fact everything i have is being shared on 3 5 11 and 12. right now the dvd drives are conflicting and the nvidia nforce 2 ata controler is showing conflicts.

im out of ideas. everything i do seems to make things worse.

[bsaller]

If it was me I would remove all the drivers for the "old soundcard" and the "new soundcard". Do NOT reboot, but shutdown the computer and then physically remove your new soundcard. Start up your computer and let WinXP do it's thing. Right click my computer and choose properties. Choose device manager and right click any yellow cautions and remove them. Shut down the computer. Install your new soundcard and restart the computer and let windows redetect your missing hardware.
Altough I'm no expert I've done a lot of this kind of thing in WIN 9x.

BTW if my suggestion fails, contact your soundcard manuf.
Good luck!

[nighthawk]

well this is what has happend so far.

i tried unistalling and reinstalling drivers. did not work. i tried using the bios and i ended up tweeking to much stuff. i ended up having to reset it to defalts.

in the end i ended up screwing things up so badly that i had to format. thankfully i just backed up the sytem. now i am going to try agian but this time im going from fresh.

trial and error

its the best way i know how to figure out how this stuff works.

i will say. now my sytem is running like a dream.

[Ron]

First, disable plug-and-play in the BIOS ... it is evil. Microsoft even recommends disabling it.

Second, the mobo has built in LAN, audio, and video hardware, so you should make sure you have the latest BIOS flashed and disable all 3 internal devices if you are using other cards instead.

Do you have to use the linksys LAN card? It should only be needed if you're directly connected to a gigabit backbone, otherwise the built in LAN would be fine.

If the BIOS allows you to enable/disable ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface), try turning it on (if it's off) or off (if it's on). ACPI will auto-assign and share interrupts if it is enabled. If you can't disable ACPI from the BIOS, then you have to reinstall Windows XP and disable it during the install.

PCI slots will behave differently depending on the installed hardware, and different slots are usually assigned different interrupts depending on the ACPI setup and type of hardware. Try moving any PCI cards to different slots.

Windows XP cannot rebalance resources in the same way that Windows 98 does. After PCI resources are set, they cannot be changed. If you change to an incorrect IRQ setting or I/O range for the bus that a device is on, Windows XP cannot compensate by rebalancing the resource that was assigned to that bus.

My suggestion?
-Disable plug and play in the BIOS.
-Toggle ACPI in the BIOS if you can.
-Disable the onboard video and audio in the BIOS.
-Use the built in LAN.
-Pull ALL devices except for your video card and main drive to get the computer back into a stable state.
-Try the new audio card in all 3 PCI slots. If you still can't get it to work with only the mobo, video card, main drive and audio card installed, then it's time to punt.

Ditch the Biostar board. I bought a Biostar board a while back because it was the best "bang for the buck". I tossed it a few months later after having constant problems with memory assignment conflicts. I then spent twice as much $ for a DFI Lanparty, and I haven't had a bit of trouble since. All of the other hardware stayed the same.

[lonewolf]

when i said about the 500 mghz system i meant that it is running like one.

Oh, OK. I thought it was a vintage machine running Windows 98. If its XP Home on a newer machine, don't do what I said!

[lonewolf]

First, disable plug-and-play in the BIOS ... it is evil. Microsoft even recommends disabling it.

Ron, could you point me to that article? I've only seen them recommend this for non-ACPI and CEPC systems.

I've never had any problem with the hundreds of PCs that I have set up using "Plug and Play O/S: Yes".

[Ron]

First, disable plug-and-play in the BIOS ... it is evil. Microsoft even recommends disabling it.

Ron, could you point me to that article? I've only seen them recommend this for non-ACPI and CEPC systems.

I've never had any problem with the hundreds of PCs that I have set up using "Plug and Play O/S: Yes".

There isn't an article. It's all from first hand knowledge of writing Windows device drivers and direct contact through MSDN. (Thank God I don't have to do that anymore.) Device detection and installation should be handled by the hardware and the kernel level drivers regardless of PNP and ACPI.
All that it takes to hose PNP is to have a manufacturer release an updated driver that has a bug. PNP won't let you roll back to the previous bug-free version unless you manually remove all of the driver related files and registry entries for the device. It happened to me years ago with an update of nVidea's driver code for a graphics card. The driver was also MS certified, not a Beta.
In other words, PNP does nothing to help install devices with properly written drivers, but it can cause the type of problem that makes you want to toss your computer out of a window.

[nighthawk]

still nothing. ive got everything disabled except fot the video. whenever i go in and try to manually change things it only lets me reserve things for the onboard devices. everything else gets shared whith whats left.

sorry im drawing a blank for the correct terms.

i think its about time to play some pc baseball.

[Ron]

Are you able to get the system back to the state it was in before you tried to add the new soundcard?

Also, you should disable the onboard PCI video if you are using an AGP video card.

[Staceman]

Quite odd, I haven't had IRQ related conflicts/problems at all since the start of the XP era.

[nighthawk]

ron there is no onboard video. i got everything back to normal now with a reset to factory defults in bios and a format.

last time i did that i got the soundcard installed and working like it should but as soon as i restarted it wasnt picking it up. it gave me a code 10. so i uninstalled it and shut down the putter removed the sound card started it up again then i shut down again installed the sound card started up and reinstalled the drivers.

restard pc and same thing all over again. i have the onboard sound and serial ports disabled. i have the network card removed and i am using the onboard one. at this moment.

[Staceman]

I know this may sound kinda old school, but, are there any jumpers on the sound card to adjust settings?

Is this an older sound card, or newer one? Any particular reason why you're using it as opposed to the on-board sound?

In my experience anyway, the onboard sound of the newer motherboards, give you everything you need, even 5.1 surround.

[nighthawk]

i picked the new sound card up to do some home recording. the onboard unit was way to noisy.

[nighthawk]

i got it finally. after countless hours of restarts.

i ended up doing as ron said in the bios as closely as i could. then i formated again for the 4th time in three days. after all that was done i installed each device one by one. all i installed right off the start was video dvd drive and hard drive. well i had to. after the second hard drive second dvd drive flopy drive usb ports fire wire and sound it ran smoothly. accually i think this is the best i have ever had it running.

now if i can keep all those dang viruses out i will be good to go.

the sound quallity is freeking awsome. and loud as all heck. now mabie i can do those recordings like i want to. the sound card was the last thing i had to get.

you know. widows sucks when its not working very good.

[tornandfrayed]

What kind of sound card was that? I am just curious, I haven't seen a problem like that for quite some time.

[nighthawk]

the card is an m-audio delta 1010lt. the more i think about it the more i realize that the whole problem was the mother board and me doing things wrong. all i really had to do was disable plug and play then format with a clean install of all the software and drivers. i kept screwing up by reseting the bios then formating and then changing the bios. i was being an idiot. it all came down to the order in which i did things.

hey at least i learned a lot from it.