IRQ PRoblems Please Help!!!!!!!

[IFReeman]

My friend has just got a new computer PIII 733Mhz on a Asus P3V4X mobo 256Mb 133Mhz SDram. There are 5 PCI slots on this board and he has got 4 cards to go in. They are

1. Soundblaster live Platinum
2. Ethernet network card
3. Diamond Supra modem
4. Hauppage WinTV Theater

All of the cards went in fine but when it cam to installing the wintv card there were problems. At first it tried to take IRQ 11 which I know is supposed to stay with the graphics card. So by changing the memory range I managed to swop it to IRQ 10 (because apparently you cant change the IRQ setting for this card in windows, but I thought you could). IRQ 10 is in use by the sound card, IRQ 9 is in use by the USB controller, and yes he is using a USB device so that cant be disconnected.

Can someone suggest as to what order the cards should be put into the slots and how to overcome the problem with the IRQ settings. Is it possible to change the settings in the bios?

Iain.

[FrozenLiquidity]

IFReeman, the Asus P3V4X has 6 PCI slots.

The last one is shared between the ISA slot though. I am having problems tha are similar to the problems that you are having.

Go check it out here http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/Forum2/HTML/007199.html
You might find some good suggestions.

FrozenLiquidity

[daveleau]

One thing I do that usually takes care of problems like this, is disabling hardware I am not using. In both of my systems I have LPT1 and Com 2 disabled. With the SB Live, I also disable the SB16 emulator. I have noticed no difference in sound performance on my SB Live! Value in doing so. I have lots in my systems as well and had to wrestle with this as well on my BF6's
Dave

[FrozenLiquidity]

Hey dave, could that solution apply to my problem in any way? I need to resolve that problem ASAP, as I have a LAN party to attend to Sunday.

FrozenLiquidity

[Mark]

Try putting the nic on irq 3. If the usb device happens to be a mouse or if he's using a ps/2 mouse then install the modem on com 1, irq 4 or just put it in pnp mode and it should be ok. This should give you one or two more free irqs.

[Strip]

IRQ Steering not working?

[CMonster]

Be sure you try reinstalling the chipset patch/IRQ miniport drivers before wasting too much more time.

daveleau - is correct about disabling unused hardware and freeing up resources. But also try removing all the cards, reinstall the chipset patch -reboot- shutdown, and then reinstall the cards one at a time. Probably it is not a good idea to fill the PCI slot next to the AGP.


The ASUS P3V4X Mainboard is based on the VIA®
Apollo Pro133A chipset with ATX form factor for
the latest support in Intel Pentium® II/III
233~733+MHz Coppermine and CeleronTM processors.
This fascinating chipset is equipped with 133MHz
Front Side Bus (FSB), and support for PC133 SDRAM
and AGP 4X, Ultra DMA/66, Wake-On LAN, Ring,
Keyboard/Mouse, as well as Chassis Intrusion
Detection. It is also bundled with ASUS PC Health
Monitoring to monitor and ensure maximum safety
for your PC. Finally, the excessive PCI Slots (6
in total) will enable multiple hardware devices
(eg. SCSI, CD-RW, DVD-ROM, etc) and hence solves
the problem of any future expansion. but when it comes to resources conflicts -the name "VIA" really says it all.




The VIA® Apollo Pro133A is a high performance
chipset which provides 133MHz memory bandwidth to
supports a wide range of PC133 memory devices.

[Chainsaw]

Iain,
Daveleau's and CMonster's suggestions should steer you on the right track, I have one last suggestion which has worked for me when I just could not resolve IRQ confilicts.
It sounds a little drastic, but when this happened to me, I just put the Win98 CD in and ran Setup again. I didn't loose any configurations that I wanted, but this let Windows refigure all the IRQ's automatically and fixed things right up. I would try the previous suggestions before doing this, but if nothing else works, you might consider giving this a try.
Best of luck,
c:::CHNsaw

[IFReeman]

Thanks for the advice from all of you, I finally managed to get all the cards working by using the bios settings to force each slot to use a specific IRQ setting. So if anybody needs any help on resolving this issue I have now had plenty of practice.

Iain.