IRQ?

[ace31216]

My computer keeps crashing and someone told me it might be an IRQ conflict or problem. They said to juggle my cards to different slots. What does this all mean? What is an IRQ? WHy change my cards? Any helpful websites to explain all of this to me? Thanks!!!

 

[Stargazer]

IRQ means Interupt Request. Basically every piece of hardware in your computer has one assigned to it. Think of it as a way of your computer identifying a certain piece. If more then one piece is using the same IRQ then sometimes this can cause problems if the hardware doesn't share. Certain slots share IRQs with certain other slots so it is important which slot you seat cards in. Basically, its a good idea to leave PCI Slot1 empty (the one right next to the AGP card) since this would share with the video card and in my experience that is usually a bad thing.
Anyway, I personally like sitting the sound card in slot 3. But it really depends on your mainboard too...
If you would like to describe your problem in a little more detail and tell what kind of system it is you are on that would be helpful. For instance, what motherboard and processor are you running? Sound Card? Video Card? All this info is helpful. Also, what kind of crashes? Is it simply going into a hard lock where you have to reset the power or is it crashing out to windows or resetting on its own?
Also, if you goto My Computer/Control Panel/System... and then click on the Device Manager tab it will bring up a list of hardware that is connected. From here you can update drivers manually, check the resources being used by different cards, and a few more things. If you go in there and see a conflict then you know what the problem is... unfortunatly sometimes things can be using the same IRQ and not actually conflicting (atleast as not as far as windows can tell) but it still causes problems.
Anyway, I hope this info is useful and please post back about your system speck and problem so we can better diagnose. Thanks

 

[KashGarinn]

Sorry if I butt in here, but I'm having a similar problem..

At first when I installed win2k the pc blue-screened me and restarted when I tried to install service pack 2, directx 8.0a and the soundblaster live drivers..

But I got it in by having more programs running..

Now I'm experiencing freeze-ups which happen 2-3 hours after I boot up the computer..

I'm thinking that the memory is faulty, or that perhaps the way my PCI cards IRQ are handled is faulty..

what problem am I facing when I?m thrown out of the pc and it reboots, and what problem am I facing when it freezes altogether ?

This probably is very vague, so I'm not too optimistic on a specific answer.. possible solutions would intrigue me though.

thanx.

Steinthor

 

[ace31216]

Thanks stargazer! Well the type of crashes I'm getting are the blue screens which displays the error then it resets itself after a few seconds back to windows 2000. I have a 900 T-Bird on an Asus a7133. I have the a Geforce 2 MX in the AGP slot. My sound card is a Philips Acoustic Edge on the 3rd PCI slot. My Lindsy Network card is on the very last bottom slot. I see no conflicts in the device manager. A month ago, I thought the RAM might be the problem since I had Kingston Value RAM. So I took it out and I replaced it with 256MB PC133 Crucial stick. I still get the crashes. Any help will be appreciated. Thank you.

 

[kazeakuma]

Stargazer has most of it. If you computer regularly crashes it's unlikely it's an IRQ conflict. If it always crashes when running a specific program then it's possible. If you go to the device manager and look for yellow exclamation marks next to devices you can then click properties on that device and see what the error is. You'll be able to find out if you have a conflict this way.

ah heck I just realised you had replied.

Well... Make sure you have the latest drivers for your motherboard. A friend of mine had similar problems, the latest motherboard drivers off the Asus website and flashing the BIOS to version 1005 fixed all his problems.

KashGarinn - You could have a heat issue I guess. It's hard to tell. Also make sure you have the latest drivers installed as well as they are probably the cause of your bluescreens if you have a mobo with a via chipset.

 

[AshBaumblat]

If you have tried all other solutions and still can't figure it. If you have tried reinstalling everything and the OS and still get these intermittent crashes it could be a bad power supply. Somtimes if the power supply is faulty it can cause crashes similar to this. I recently had this problem somtimes it would reboot entirely somtimes just crash. When I replaced the power supply everything worked fine. PS It's probably some type of device conflict though. Freeze ups can also be caused by overheating. If your graphics card or CPU are getting to hot. Check the temp of your CPU. Somtimes people don't install there HSF properly.

 

[Stargazer]

These are all good examples and ideas. I suggest you try out each one.
Also, its a good idea to disable ACPI and see if that helps. It seems to cause system freezups from some of the people I have heard.
Anyway, I have an Athlon 1.2, SbLive XGamer, Geforce2 32mb, IBM 45gig, etc etc on a Asus A7v which uses the KT133A chipset and I was getting freezes in games regularly but if I turned off the sound it wouldn't freeze. I noticed that the SB16Emulation was using IRQ5 but the SbLive Series was using 11 no matter what I did (I tried everything to change it). However, after flashing my bios to the latest version it then read it correctly as IRQ5 and I have no more freezes. So, basically what i am saying is I think updating all your drivers to the latest versions is your best bet and flashing your bios is probably wise. However, if you have never done it before I recomend you get a friend that has with you just in case. Anyway, most of the flash programs now make it pretty easy but still... a little precaution is adviced. Good luck, friend.