IRQ 9 has logjam!!!

[Ifyoubuildit]

Just built a computer on the weekend:

ASUS A7M BIOS V. 1.03 board with all up to date drivers (VIA 3 in 1 and AGP miniport drivers) has 1 AGP 4X and 5 PCI slots

The OS is Win98 SE

I have - AGP RADEON 64 CARD
PCI Slot 1 - Empty
PCI Slot 2 - ATI TV Wonder
PCI Slot 3 - SoundBlaster 128
PCI Slot 4 - Netgear FA310 Ethernet Card
PCI Slot 5 - Realtek RTL8029(AS) Ethernet NIC

Two NIC's because I have Cable Internet and Local network. I am using SE's ICS to share internet between two machines.

When I look in Device Manager I see the following:

1) All IRQ's are taken
2) IRQ 9 is being shared by the following 6 devices:

Netgear NIC
Realtec NIC
VIA TECH 3038 PCI - USB UNIVERSAL HOST CONTROLLER
VIA TECH 3038 PCI - USB UNIVERSAL HOST CONTROLLER (again)
ACPI IRQ HOLDER FOR PCI IRQ STEERING
SCI IRQ used by ACPI BUS

USB ROOT HUB is also listed twice in USB CONTROLLERS section.

Sounblaster PCI 128 Legacy Device is disabled in Hardware Profile because Windows said that there were no free IRQ's to assign to it. Soundblaster PCI 128 still exists in Multimedia devices and I still have sound. What use is SB PCI 128 Legacy Device anyway?

Does everything seem normal? No device conflicts (exclamation marks) are showing up. The only one was SB 128 Legacy before I disabled it. System is stable otherwise.

Does it matter what slots the PCI devices go in? Could rearranging them help?

[muno]

Legacy drivers are for dos applications. Your system obviously supports irq sharing so no problems are appearing. As long as you get no crashes (due to irqs) you are fine.
If you don't use usb, disable the device to free up irqs. Also, if you don't need dos support, disable the legacy driver.
-M

[Beemer]

You could figure out what slot your NIC is in and assign an IRQ for it in the BIOS.

Another way is to blow away the enum key in the registry.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Enum

Make a backup of your registry first and make sure you have all your software handy. It can be a bit of software hell but windows will redetect your components and reasign I/O and IRQ's. Cleans things up a bit. If you still end up with IRQ conflicts, Get into your bios and asign a IRQ to the slot your NIC is in.

Cheers!




[This message has been edited by Beemer (edited 07-18-2001).]

[Sterling_Aug]

How many of the cards were in the system when you installed the OS?

I would take out ALL cards except the video and then install them one at a time to allow Windows to reassign the IRQ's again.

I would also MOVE the video card to SLOT 1 closest to the processor for faster speed to the video.

[gwinters]

I have a similar issue with my A7V133. It puts everything on IRQ 9. It isn't a problem, but I did have a problem with my NIC when 'PNP OS' was turned on in the BIOS. The NIC would not receive packets for some reason. As long as your NICs are working for you, this is probably uneeded info.

[Beemer]

gwinters
Did you forget to mention that you are using WinY2K?

That is usually the case with that O/S.

[gwinters]

It did that in either Win2K or Win98SE. It was also a problem on my Abit KT7A that has the same VIA chipset. I guessed that it was more of a chipset issue. I just realized that the A7M in question does not use that chipset. All of my devices still work fine on IRQ 9 though.

[This message has been edited by gwinters (edited 07-18-2001).]

[Beemer]

I dual boot Win98 and on a separate drive, WinY2K. Win98 doesn't have a problem with the ACPI handling of the hardware. It lets you configure it as you wish or it does a fine job of it all by itself. (usually) On the other hand, my WinY2K didn't do well with an ACPI type of computer installation. Everything on IRQ 9. (Almost everything) It didn't really seem to create to much problem except with the Automatic Power Management (APM). The APM problems were enough for me to decide on the Standard Computer type. An added bonus with this change was that WinY2K freed up the IRQ asignment for reconfiguring. I setup my slot IRQ asignments in the BIOS to my liking nd I've been a happy camper ever since.

Here's a piece of a thread I posted earlier:

<u>ACPI</u>

(Advanced Configuration and Power Interface) A power management specification developed by Intel, Toshiba and Microsoft that makes hardware status information available to the operating system. ACPI enables a PC to turn its peripherals on and off for improved power management especially in portables. It also allows the PC to be turned on and off by external devices, so that the touch of a mouse or the press of a key will "wake up" the machine. ACPI support is built into Windows 98.

In WinY2K, ACPI might create a problem with IRQ assignments. Some devices don't like shared IRQ's so changing the way your computer deals with your hardware and assigned IRQ's might clear up some kiinds of symptoms or problems in WinY2K. Removing the ACPI support by selecting your type of computer as being a Standard PC at either Windows Y2K installation, or in the update driver of System Properties and Computer, Properties.

Note: Converting to a Standard PC from a ACPI enabled computer doesn't work well. ACPI to Standard PC has a problem with the hardware abstration layers information stored in the registry. The ACPI registry information isn't thoughly removed from the registry is how I heard it. Something about left over instructions from the ACPI configuration.


Cheers!



[This message has been edited by Beemer (edited 07-18-2001).]

[Beemer]

I'm a little off topic now but I found a link to an ACPI and Hardware Abstraction Layers article on the KB:
http://support.microsoft.com/support.../q237/5/56.asp

Cheers!