IRQ Problems

[Guest]

I know this is a cheap board but im working with want i can get right now. I have a PC Chips 810LMR. Im running a Duron 750MHz with 256PC133 ram. The MB has built on sound, video, and lan. I have disabled the OB sound card and installed a SB Live! vallue - no problem. However I'm currently using the OB Video while trying to install my GF 2 MX. The problem that I am having is that both the SB Live and the OB Lan are on IRQ 10 and when I install the GF 2 MX it goes to the same IRQ as well and my system locks up rather quickly with it in. Ive tried to change the IRQs in windows and it won't let me, when I originally started with this problem all of these devices were on IRQ 11 and I changed something in the Bios that moved all of them to 10, but nothing I have done has seperated them. What is realy killing me is that I have IRQ 3 and 9 that are not being used at all and I still can't do anything about it. Does anyone have a suggestion or has anyone else come accross this and knows what to do. Thanks for any Help.

 

[BrainStorm]

In your BIOS, try to reserve an IRQ to your SB PCI slot number.

Hope that helps!

It's better to be rich and healthy than poor and sick!

 

[BrainStorm]

Oups, I forgot to tell, windows will automaticly change your SB to your selected IRQ within the BIOS.

It's better to be rich and healthy than poor and sick!

 

[Kelledin]

Are you by any chance running Windows 2000?

I ask because Win2K will check and see if you have an ACPI-capable system. If it sees ACPI capability, it will do ACPI IRQ routing--and ACPI IRQ routing does exactly what you're seeing, it shoves all your PCI expansion cards to a single IRQ. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't; it seems to be dependent upon your mobo and its BIOS. In my setup, it seems to work just fine--Win2K doesn't crash on me unless the 3D graphics get pushed hard, and even then only rarely.

Sadly, Win2K will automatically set itself up for ACPI if it sees it. It doesn't seem to give you any choice in the matter. I'd try disabling ACPI in the BIOS and reinstalling Win2K; if that doesn't help, then we know it's something else...

Kelledin
<font color=red>"Step away from the gimp suit and put your hands on top of your head."</font color=red>

 

[sinner]

one big issue with irq problems that usually helps alot. If you are not using your serial ports, (nothing plugged into the nine pin male ports) go into the bios and disable them. Then(important) enable reset configuration data under the pci/pnp configuration, this resets the hardware configuration, hopefully reassigning your peripherals correctly. By disabling both serial ports that are not in use, you are freeing up other irqs so they can be used, giving you more flexibility and less problems. Let me know how it goes.

-sinner.

 

[Guest]

I'm running WinME, and the only thing i could find in the bios that said ACPI was under the power management section. Thanks for the help and if you have any other ideas please offer

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the idea but the comp won't let me reserve any IRQs, at least that i can find and being a full time tech i know what your talking about and it just isn't included in this mb's bios. feel free to offer anything else you can think of

 

[dmcmahon]

Be sure you have "plug and play OS" turned off in the BIOS. Here's another suggestion if you haven't tried it -- go into the BIOS and if you have a setting for "Clear configuration cache on next boot", set it to Yes and reboot.

I will tell you a story: on my old system, I upgraded boards several times for various reasons, switched modems twice (first to get to V.90 and then to get a real modem that works with Linux) and switched sound cards once (from an ISA to a PCI card). I found that I had plenty of IRQs left at the software level, but none of them was being used by Windows. Finally in desparation I tried the "clear config" setting and like magic it found all these spare IRQs. Seems like some BIOSes will keep resources assigned to old cards after you pull them out, and won't reuse them because they don't know if the board is going to be put back in or not (some sort of plug-and-play feature?).

One other suggestion, try moving one or more of the cards to another PCI slot, sometimes the hardware interrupt wiring to the slots dictates the IRQs at the software level, and most boards have fewer hardware lines than slots so there is some hard-wired sharing under the covers (I'm lucky, Asus documents the wiring at this level for my mobo).