IRQ-steering and ACPI

[moskus]

I've installed WinXP with ACPI enabled. Yes, I know it's stupid, but my PC didn't work at all with ACPI turned off. Now, as you can see my soundcard (Audiotrak Inca88) is using IRQ 19(!). And I see that there are lots of IRQs free.

What will happen if I steer the Inca88 to IRQ 7 in BIOS? Will it do me any good? Will Windows crash or still give the Inca88 IRQ 19?

 

[DS_Sultan]

I can't tell from the pic whether or not anything but the Inca is on that IRQ, presuming the miditrak is part oif the card as it says audiotrak on it as does the other entry. Is there anything other than the card itself, it's controllers or the steering on that IRQ? If not, then you should be good to go. Steering it to a lower level interupt will not help you, in fact, it may cause you more trouble.

Give it a shot and see what you get.

 

[Middleman]

If you are not using that second com port on IRQ 3 I would disable it in the bios to free up some resources.

Sometimes IRQ 7 is used for LPT1 so check that before you change anything. If you are not having problems with the INCA I would leave it.

 

[moskus]

There is a problem with the Inca88 and the network card. When accessing internet (or whatever network-related) the soundcard crashes, and then 15 secs later Windows crashes.

And yes, DS Sultan, Miditrak is a part of the soundcard...

On the startup-screen USB, Inca88 and the network card show up on IRQ 10. And I thougt that sharing the IRQ with the network-card is what is causing the problem with the soundcard...

 

[DS_Sultan]

Then you need to move the sound card or the NIC to another slot so they do not share the IRQ.

Yes, you could disable one or both of your com ports to free the IRQ's up, but that is not going to ensure that the sound card or the NIC gets one of the newly available resources. The slot itself will dictate which resourecs it will ba able to use. Some slots share IRQ's regardless of your BIOS settings.

To be sure, move one or the other in addition to disabling one or both of your COM ports.

If you need help in determinig what resources will be used by any given slot, your motherboard manual (hoping you have one) will tell you what the slots are capable of using.

You need to resolve the conflicts first, then all else will follow.

Let me know if you need more details.

 

[moskus]

The problem is that Windows doesen't report any problems because of ACPI. My soundcard at IRQ 19?!? I didn't think that IRQs went higher than 15.

Anyway, my bios tells me that PCI-slots 1 and 5 share settings, and thats good news (for a change). My NIC is in slot 2 and audiocard in slot 4. I don't need COM2 and was planning to disable it anyway.

What I'm planning to do is turn of Plug and Play in BIOS, and set PCI-slot 4 to IRQ 2 (or whatever free IRQ I find). What I'm worried about is WinXP with ACPI enabled. I've just re-formated the harddrive and installed every program I use, and I don't want to do that again...

 

[moskus]

I THINK I've solved the problem. I moved the Inca from PCI-slot 4 to 3 and set PCI-slot 3 to IRQ 5 in BIOS. Now WinXP reports that the Inca88 is using IRQ 18. Well... I don't have the problems I used to have, so far it's a success! Whoho!

But I'll shurely find another problem soon...