How do I free up a IRQ?

[ThomasT]

Hi, I'm having problems with my CMI8330 driver (C-media sound card driver for SS7 M557) and IE5. I know the problem is because I have no available IRQ's for the device. If I remove the CMI8330 drivers IE5 runs fine with no "General Protection Faults". The CMI 8330 is the most recent driver for win98. Is there a way to free up or add an IRQ for this device. If I have windows determine the possible devices that I can remove to free up a IRQ, it only provides one that I must have: VooDooIII, Modem, Digital audio, lpt1.
Can anybody help.

Thanks,
Tom

[BBA]

What is your configuration, I mean in what slots do you have cards and what cards are in the slots?

What MB do you have and does it have the latest bios flash?

Does Windows device manager show any yellow ?'s for the devices?

BBA

[jmatrix]

If you are using a PS/2 mouse this is automatically assigned IRQ 12 by windows. If you switch to a serial mouse connection, this will free up IRQ 12 for other devices. Another trick is to reposition your cards so that two compatable cards can share one IRQ. Example...in one of my systems I have my NIC card in the first PCI slot under the AGP slot for my Voodoo 3 AGP. These two can share a single IRQ without problems. It's a lot of trial and error...but there is usually a work-around.
Good Luck,
Paul

[ThomasT]

Thanks. BBA. The only slot I'm using the the AGP and PCI slot 2 for the modem. The sound card is built into the board. The MB is a super socker 7 M557. What I have done is disables com 2 and that seemed to work. Do you think this will be a problem?

jmatrix: how do you switch to a serial mouse conection?

Thanks for help guys!
Tom

[CMonster]

First, if you have a super7 board it is never a good idea to put anything in the PCI slot next to the AGP - this is asking for trouble.

COM ports - if you are not using COM2 disabling it in BIOS is the way to go.

edit~ it doesn't seem as though you have that many things on your system - what are all your IRQs assigned to? Did you check the device manager under "Computer" to see what all these IRQs are being used by?

[This message has been edited by CMonster (edited 07-11-99).]