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NIC ACPI Drivers in Win 2K?

W

white

Senior member
Hi, about a year ago when i upgraded from Win 98 to Win 2000 the only driver that I had a hard time with under 2000 was my NIC driver. I emailed the company about driver support under 2000 and they said to use a driver for a different card included with 2000 since they used the same hardware. so i listened to them and it worked.

last night i checked my irq's and i have seven devices on 11. i tried changing to "Standard PC" but this time when it tried to find drivers for my nic the one i selected out of their list the first time wasn't there. i went back to ACPI so that i could use my nic again and noticed that in the list of included drivers under 2000, this one was listed as ACPI.

Q: Since my nic seems to have driver support in 2000 only with ACPI, do i have to choose between this card and having seven devices on 11?
 
Is your system working properly while having 7 devices on IRQ7? If so, then I wouldn't worry too much about it. BTW, I have a laptop running Win2k Pro, and it has 6 devices sharing IRQ9. So far, it's been running for months with absolutely no problems.
 
If running in ACPI mode most (if not all) devices will share the same irq (usually 9) because win2k will be using virtual irqs for control. Hence why things seem odd when running standard PC. As for the NIC driver, the solution is simple when running standard PC: remove the card and boot the system. Shut down and re-install the card. Then re-boot the machine and win2k will automatically detect and install the most compatible driver it can. Check it in device manager to see.
 
legacy6, the reason i want to put everything on its own irq is because i believe it may be causing conflicts with my sound card.

iron woode, i'm hesitant to do that again unless i can know for sure that it will work. just to clear up any possuble confusion, here's what happened when i went into device manager last time i tried to change to standard pc.

in device manager i go to the nic, properties, driver tab. i click on "Update driver..." i have it display a list of drivers so that i can choose the correct one. after i choose network cards it comes up with the split field screen with manufacturers on the left and network adapter on the right. here's where acpi and standard pc diverge.

under acpi the manufacturer i'm looking for is listed. under standard pc it is not. also, when it is listed it shows "Macronix MX98715 Family Fast Ethernet Adapter (ACPI)". the "acpi" in parenthesis and having this listing only with acpi is what lead me to think that maybe this driver only works with ACPI.

so if after i choose standard pc, power off, remove card, boot up, install other drivers, power off, reinstall card, and boot up, will the ACPI driver i need show up even though i'm running "Standard PC?"
 
The cards' designation you saw may mean that the card is acpi compliant, rather than using acpi drivers.

The real crux of the matter is which do you prefer? Standard PC or ACPI? Choose one and then go from there.

If standard then you MAY(not necessarily so) need to re-install win2k to set it correctly. I always have set my system to Standard PC because it is just easier to me. As for the NIC, win2k has drivers for just about every NIC on the market. It will detect and install the NIC as best it can, especially if the NIC may be a generic one. So far i have tried 4 completely different NICs (SMC, D-Link 530tx, Lan Star Fastethernet and Macronix) and each one installed with no problems at all. But i installed each one by removing the previous one first and running the system before installing the new one. The one I prefer is the D-Link.

If the card is generic it will show up in device manager with a completely different name. The Macronix i used showed up as NDC - something or other.

This is about the best i can do. I just let win2k handle everything.
 
i don't really have a problem if i have to reinstall windows 2000 since i've done it several times in the past few days. but i'll try to simply change to Standard PC now. here i go.

thanks a lot.
 
hmmm.....it didn't find drivers for my nic under standard pc again. so i changed back to acpi. i have a sohoware card by ndc. how did you get yours to work, ironwoode?
 
the macronix i tried was fairly old. Maybe yours is newer. One thing to try would be to see how it identifies your NIC. If the id is not the same as the manufacturer, then try looking for drivers for the company it thinks the NIC is. That is what i did when i wanted newer drivers. You could try winfiles.com or windrivers.com.

It is kind of difficult to give you the best advice through this forum. Actually being there would be best. But that is the way it is.
 
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