IRQ problems (yeah I know).. my plan to resolve the issue

[MDesigner]

I have a professional audio card, and the drivers for it suck. It's giving me blue screens from IRQ conflicts. Yeah, so the developers suck and don't realize IRQ sharing is a big part of most modern motherboards.. that issue aside, I need to deal with this ASAP.

I was going to reformat and reinstall Windows with "Standard PC" as the HAL option. I've read that standard PC mode lets you change the IRQs at will. This way, I can find a free IRQ and reassign the audio card to that IRQ.

The thing is, I have a dual core Athlon. And I believe if I choose "Standard PC" as my HAL, it will only recognize one CPU. If I choose the "MPS Multiprocessor PC" HAL, will I get dual core, AND have the ability to assign IRQs manually? Will Windows still auto-choose IRQs for the most part to save me a lot of hassle?

 

[Nothinman]

You can never change the IRQs on a modern system, they're tied to the physical slots. The best you can do is move the card around until it's not sharing with anything or if it's sharing with something onboard like USB or a NIC you can disable that in the BIOS so that it's not sharing any more.

 

[mchammer]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
You can never change the IRQs on a modern system, they're tied to the physical slots. The best you can do is move the card around until it's not sharing with anything or if it's sharing with something onboard like USB or a NIC you can disable that in the BIOS so that it's not sharing any more.

Not really true. What is fixed with PCI (without message based interrupts-which are not supported in Windows XP) is which slots or devices share an IRQ with each other. However that IRQ# is not fixed. Look in your motherboard manual and see which slot is not shared and put the card in there. Also make sure that your IO-APIC is enabled in the BIOS. I have heard that windows will spread around the IRQ assignments more if it is enabled (plus it is needed for multicore).

I am not familiar with this "MPS Multiprocessor PC HAL."

 

[Nothinman]

Not really true. What is fixed with PCI (without message based interrupts-which are not supported in Windows XP) is which slots or devices share an IRQ with each other. However that IRQ# is not fixed.

I knew someone was going to say that and being pedantic you are correct, but the IRQ# itself is irrelevant as the IRQ itself will always be shared with whatever other device shares that physical IRQ line.

I have heard that windows will spread around the IRQ assignments more if it is enabled (plus it is needed for multicore).

And depending on the problem with the device it might not make a bit of difference.

I am not familiar with this "MPS Multiprocessor PC HAL."

MPS is the old MultiProcessor Specification, it's how the hardware's SMP configuration was relayed to the OS before ACPI.

 

[mchammer]

Should he try the MPS then? If he does, which would disable ACPI, should he also set the BIOS setting "PnP OS" to "yes" which would give the operating system control over assigning IRQs? (This setting is ignored when ACPI is enabled, I believe.)

 

[Nothinman]

I doubt it'll make a difference and a lot of newer motherboards don't include MPS information anymore so it might not even be an option for him.

 

[MDesigner]

Hmm. I'll have to try a few options later, when there's a lull in my project.

Another option, I found these generic ASIO drivers: http://www.asio4all.com/

I could try running those, maybe they actually know how to handle IRQ sharing, unlike M-Audio.

 

[Nothinman]

I could try running those, maybe they actually know how to handle IRQ sharing, unlike M-Audio.

If it's a hardware problem, like most Creative crap seems to have, then changing drivers won't make any difference.

 

[MDesigner]

It's the m-audio driver causing the blue screen because it's not programmed properly to handle IRQ sharing. I figure a driver switch might do the trick.