Lockups with Netgear card - PLEASE HELP!

[nebula]

Rather than typing everything over again, I'll paste the email I sent to Netgear tech support. Any advice is GREATLY appreciated
--------------------------------------------
I am having problems concerning system lockups. The following is a
description of my computer:

Celeron 466
128 MB RAM
TNT2 Video Card
Netgear FA310TX (connected to cable modem)
Linksys LNE100TX (connected to second computer which shares cable
through Sygate)
Windows 98 Original
Creative SBLive

I used to have a cable modem connection with my older system, which used
a Netgear FA310TX card also. During use, the system would freeze for a
brief second, as if it was caching, but it was NOT caching at the time
of these pauses. Also, randomly during use, it would completely lock up.
Now, I have a newer system as described above, which is now connected to
the cable modem with a Netgear card. My old system now shares the
connection. (The old system has a Netgear card connected to the Linksys
card in my new computer.) I have uninstalled and reinstalled drivers for
all 3 network cards, returned them to the store and tried new ones
thinking they may be defective, tried different connection sharing
software (Wingate, All Aboard, and now Sygate), but the lockups still
continue. This did not occur at all when I was using a 56k modem and had
no network cards installed. Also, my old system NO LONGER locks up now
that it isnt connected directly to cable, but my new one does. I have
tried everything I can think of with no success. The only thing I can
think of is a compatibility problem with my cable modem and network
card, but since the card was included with the cable modem when I had it
installed, that seems odd. Please assist me in overcoming this problem,
as it is a huge annoyance and I have run out of ideas. Thanks
--------------------------------------------

Please help if you have any ideas, as I've been working on this for months and had no luck.

[obenton]

NICs generally don't like sharing IRQs, and are also fussy about the PCI slot they're in (often they'll work in PCI slots 2 and 3, and nowhere else). Also, if using an ISA NIC, whatever IRQ it's configured for, go into MB BIOS and, in PNP configuration page, reserve that IRQ for ISA legacy device.

[nebula]

Thanks for helping - to prevent the NIC's from sharing IRQs what should I do? I assume I need to disable some devices like USB ports maybe, but I'm not positive on the best way to do this... any input appreciated.

[nebula]

I just checked in system information in Win98 and my NIC's are using IRQs 10 and 11.. also on each IRQ it says "IRQ Holder for PCI steering".. I assume that means it won't allow any other devices to use those IRQ's?

Another thing -- yesterday I disabled SB16 emulation on my SBLive, which was using an IRQ... so far, I haven't had any lockups, so hopefully that was the problem.

[obenton]

"IRQ holder ..." is just win98's way of saying that the IRQ is available for sharing. As long as nothing else goes there, it's OK. If you can live without DOS sound, I'd leave it be - can take a long time sorting out NIC problems.

[nebula]

Thanks a lot for your help - I'm almost sure it fixed the problem. No lockups or even pauses for a day now =)