Sound card freezes win98se

[dummy2001]

I'm building a revamped computer w/ Epox 8KHAL, 950 Tbird, GF3 Ti200, and Fortissimo 2 sound card. I install the VIA 4-in-1's (4.34), nvidia drivers (23.11), and all is fine. Once I load the drivers for the Fortissimo and restart the computer freezes as windows is finishing loading desktop, task manager shows "runonce" and "regsvr32" running. To my knowldge I have the latest sound drivers and the only BIOS for this mobo. Starts fine in safe mode.

I'm guessing this is some kind of IRQ issue. I had the card in the last PCI slot (5), I've tried reinstalling it in 4 and 2 also. Onboard AC97 sound is disabled in bios. What's my next step?

(I know the anadtech checklist says to get that bootlog analyzer but the download link does not work).

 

[dummy2001]

I manually assigned an empty IRQ in the BIOS to the cards slot but it still freezes.

 

[MacaroneePenguin]

Will the computer load with the sound card out of the computer?

 

[corkyg]

MacaroniPenguin asks a good question. Also - what OS are you using? If it is XP, you should have no IRQ conflicts - it shares them. Also - remove the Fortissimo and enable the onboard sound. If that works, then you have isolated the problem to the Fortissimo.

 

[dummy2001]

Yes it is the Fortissimo, when I pull the card out the computer runs fine again. This card and other hardware worked fine with a different motherboard (K7S5A), it is with the EPOX it freezes. It gets to the desktop but before any icons are showing, just the cursor w/ the hourglass then the freeze. I am using the 4.34 VIA drivers, I geuss I will try the 4.38 but they don't say anything about this problem so I don't have high expectations this will fix it.

EDIT: starting a new thread to better describe the situation as I now understand it.