Random lockups caused by missing floppy drive??

[Spudd]

Around Thanksgiving, I removed my floppy drive and gave it to my brother to take back to his dorm. I left the floppy cable connected to the Epox 8KHA mobo, and now I'm suddenly having Blue Screen's of Death and random reboots while doing ANYTHING after a while on the computer. I suspect it is the missing floppy. However, I am uncertain. Could it be the power supply? I don't understand why it would suddenly give trouble since it is only about 5 months old, nothing has changed hardware wise on my comp since I built it, and it was running rock stable until now. One other thing, which may have no significance is that the lockups began to occur right around the time I patched IE 5.5 with Microsofts' security patch that just came out. Any ideas as to the BSODs? Thanks!

 

[Spudd]

bump

 

[Vinny N]

I don't see how it could be related to the floppy drive, when I saw your topic name I thought you were referring to the brief freezes that result when something attempts to check the floppy drive for media(usually Windows searching for drivers, or maybe some AntiVirus software).

But BSODs? I don't know about that. Could you give any details as to the message of the BSODs?

How are your voltages on your motherboard doing?

Also, out of curiosity, you did change the setting for the floppy to "none" or something similar in the BIOS right? Or did your board not give any gripes?
I mean, does Windows still list in a floppy drive in the "my computer" group?

 

[Spudd]

Well, I entered the BIOS and set the floppy option to NONE. The thing is, even with no floppy, and the cable now removed, Windoze 98 insists on showing a 5.25 floppy in the My COmputer group. Is it a ghost!? LOL.

 

[Duvie]

In system devices there is an option to check for floppy drive at bootup...could disbale that as well as move any reference to it in the registry...

I don't think it is the cause...Mine has had no fdd for like 10 months no bsod not related to obvious ocing attempts or flakey divx encoding proograms...cough...xmpeg...crap!!!

 

[Spudd]

Hehe. Well, what about this: my aDSL modem card and my Seismic Edge sound card both use IRQ of 11. Is that bad? I don't seem to be able to change it. HELP! As I write this, the system has just rebooted about 3 mins ago while I was playing Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel. ACK!!! I was buying some really bad L33T weaponry too....DOH.......

 

[Duvie]

some boards offer in the bios the ability to tell the system you wish to assign irqs manually...if you have that enable it...

Otherwise start playing musical pci slots....

 

[potz]

i'm quite sure this has nothing to do with irq's... it's just that win 9x's kernel wants a floppy drive. in some bioses there is a way to report no floppy drive to windows, but it's not present in many bioses. i had long pauses and lockups when i took out my floppy till i switched to win2k, which is completely tolerant of floppyless computers. so, i'd recommend either getting a new floppy drive or switching your os.

 

[obenton]

NICs don't like to share IRQs, and they can also be fussy about what PCI slots they're in. If you're using w2k the listed IRQ doesn't really matter, as w2k has its own system for accessing hardware, but with win9x it's a no-no. PCI slots on many motherboards share IRQ lines with other devices - ISA slots, etc., and it's best to have a NIC in a slot that doesn't do this. Generally PCI slot 2 (two away from the AGP slot) is OK. Caution: if you move the NIC, before removing it from the old slot unistall it in device manager, else you'll end up with "ghost" NIC settings in the registry (that won't show up in device manager) that foul things up. This applies to any adapter you are going to remove - first uninstall it. A way to troubleshoot the problem might be to disable the sound card in device manager and see if that stops it.

 

[Spudd]

Hmm. Just for the record here are my specs:

Win 98FE patched to SE w/o shared internet connection of course...
AMD Athlon Tbird 1 Ghz, not overclocked
Epox 8KHA KT266 mobo DDR
256 MB DDR Crucial ECC
40 Gig Maxtor @ 5400 rpm
Matshita DVD-Rom
Radeon LE 32 MB DDR
Efficient Networks Speedstream 3060 internal aDSL network/modem card


I've been checking out all the messages and my mobo's manual, and this is what I found in Win98 sys properties: my aDSL, sound card, "Via...PCI to USB Universal Host Controller, and ACPI IRQ holder for PCI IRQ Steering are ALL on IRQ 11. Perhaps this is the culprit? I don't know....would you tech wizards help a poor guy out with any more info, please?? Thanks!

 

[Duvie]

I would see if in the bios you can set the irq for the usb controller and move that out of ther...also like I mentioned above it is time to go into system devices remove nic card or sound card and move the card to another pci slot and have it redetect the hardware....

 

[vegetation]

So then just get another floppy. Shouldn't cost you more than $10-15, if the problem gets fixed, then your problem will be entered into the wonderful world of troubleshooting resolutions.

 

[obenton]

The USB controller shares an IRQ line with one of the PCI slots, often slot 3 as I recall, and this is likely the one your NIC is in. Your motherboard manual should describe what PCI slots share an IRQ line with built-in devices like USB and ISA. Generally, PCI slot 2 shares with nothing else, so that's where I'd put it.