IRQ Sharing Problem

[cybertoothe]

It seems my video card, audio card, as well as both onboard USB hubs are sharing IRQ 11 using IRQ Steering or whatever you call it. The components were installed using plug and play. Is there a way reshuffle or manually set things such that preferably my video card and audio card is using it's own IRQ. Reason I'm asking is that my Everquest game, which is video and audio intensive crashes on me constantly and I'm sure it's the IRQ sharing that's causing this because I've totally disabled sound on the game and haven't had a crash yet. Any help or referral to a good website is appreciated. Thanks.

cyb

 

[DJFuji]

If Device Manager (DevMan) doesn't want to let you modify the IRQs by taking the 'automatic' option off, go into BIOS and specify your IRQs manually. For me, I was able to just use DevMan to mess around with settings to make my ATI TV card work.

 

[NelsonMuntz]

Yeah, device manager should let you make some changes to set the IRQs manually - you just need to watch out for any other conflicts as you do it.

 

[CollinsCollector]

"cybertoothe," what OS are you using? Sounds like it might be Win2K. If so, I understand that "everything assigned to IRQ11" is normal.

I doubt seriously if you will have any luck changing things in Device Manager. If you can assign IRQ's via your BIOS, that might provide some relief, but I doubt it. The bottom line is that you will probably have to shift some cards around.

If you can provide more info on your setup, there are folks with a lot more expertise than myself who can assist.

 

[ProviaFan]

Well, I have 5 things on IRQ 9 (including "Microsoft ACPI compliant system&quot, and it works fine for me. If you're using Windows 2000, if all else fails, try reinstalling and when it says press F6 for driver, press F5, and specify standard pc (iirc). That should fix it.

 

[Ben]

Read here: link

 

[Timothy]

Try moving the cards to different PCI slots. Most motherboards have 2-3 IRQs available for all slots.

Tim

 

[cybertoothe]

Thanks for all the responses thus far. My system specs:

Win98SE
AMD K62-550 (don't laugh)
Geforce 256
Sound Blaster Live Value

After some fiddling with my bios and windows device mananger I was able to disable my unused serial ports to free up an IRQ which shifted things a bit. My video and audio do not share the same IRQ but the game still crashed. After more fiddling I found out that my network card did not work because it required a certain IRQ to run, I couldn't shut down and had serveral applications including explorer crash. I was thinking of just resetting my bios and reinstalling my system, but then decided to put everything the way I had originally. Things started to work again. My game has not crashed yet, but that was only one session. Maybe all the fiddling did something who knows, it's Windows - go figure. Until things start crashing again I'll leave things alone.

Thanks for all the input,
cyb