Win98/VA-503+ Problem

[garygbond]

15 Feb 99

Having some motherboard/CPU transplant issues... replaced old MB and P150 with FIC VA-503+ and AMD K6-2 400. Had all kinds of problems with Win95a not liking the transplant and screwing up my PCI bus (which manifested itself by not allowing me a CD-ROM drive under Windows).

I have now installed a Win98 upgrade. This has solved the PCI bus problem and I now can access my CD-ROM from Windows.

But I have another couple of problems. The sound card (Ensoniq Soundscape, ISA slot) stutters, and I have a yellow exclamation point under Control Panel:System for the ISA Plug and Play Bus. Thinking that the soundcard problem might be related to the ISA Plug and Play Bus problem, I removed the bus and rebooted, but the same problem exists. When I click on "Properties" for the ISA Plug and Play Bus, the "Device Status" reads: "Windows could not load the driver for this device because the computer is reporting two ISAPNP.VXD bus types. (Code 2.) Contact your computer manufacturer to get an updated BIOS for your computer." But I already have the latest BIOS loaded on this FIC VA-503+. Are there BIOS settings that I need to change or is there a patch that I should be applying? I already installed the IRQ miniport routing patch to fix a known Win98 problem for the MVP3 chipset.

Thanks for any advice/solutions.

GaryB.
garygbond@aol.com

[DManly]

A couple of thoughts..

#1 Did you do a clean format & reload win95? If not, you may have some old bus drivers that are hanging around. FIC 503+ boards really don't like the upgrade route if you do not do the clean / reformat. I speak from experience here.

#2 Not all sound cards will work with either the new MVP3 based (read both PA2013 & 503+) motherboards. Also not all sound cards will work under win98 properly. You may also have to try a different sound card. I also speak from experience on this.

Good Luck

[garygbond]

DManly,

Thanks for the thoughts.

1) Nope, I installed Win98 right over top of Win95a. I know the clean install is better, but I couldn't bring myself to wipe out my HDD.

2) The sound card is now working properly. I went into its properties and messed around with the resource allocated to it -- not sure exactly what I did, but it's working.

I still have the yellow exclamation point over the ISA Plug and Play Bus -- but it doesn't seem to impacting performance anymore. Weird.

GaryB.
garygbond@aol.com

[CMonster]

Yes, a clean install is the best; sometimes just reinstalling (once more) will do the trick.

You might also play around with the Plug n' Play OS setting in BIOS. You were on-to something by removing the !!! problem in Device Manager and reboot. Keep trying and remove a few more things and you are likely to get it.

If you have sufficient space on your hard drive to create another partition (using Partition Magic or something like it) you could copy your data to it and then go ahead and format C: and clean install 98 without loosing files. You also could have trashed the system and registry files in the Windows folder and then installed 98.

Glad to hear your sound card is working.

George

[Skybase]

I'd gotten a letter in response from a Tech saying something about having those problems and all, and well, have you gotten the newest IRQ routing drivers from Viatech? that helped out a lot of problems I was having with my CD-R being recognized, and my modem also....also my Motherboard wasn't correctly allocating IRQs for things, they'd have the same IRQ, even though Windows reported no errors. . .just a thought . .*smile* think it's under www.viatech.com/drivers/index.htm ?. .not SURE of the address anymore, but. . .just go to www.viatech.com and find them? hehe