Custom built at a local shop 4 years back, ABIT KT7RAID, Athlon 900 TBird, 786RAM.
It came with a Soundblaster PCI128 and Windows 98. Sound was fine. When I upgraded to Win2K Pro after a while, I found the screen freezing a lot - several times an hour the cursor arrow would just stop dead, no mouse or keyboard response, nothing to do but hit the reset button. Someone here on the Forum suggested the sound card was the culprit so I tried pulling it, and presto - the screen freezes went to once every several days. I had no idea why that would be the case, but hey - I don't listen to much on my computer, so that was that.
I recently upgraded to XP Pro and was curious to see it that would make a difference, so I put it back in, and the frequent freezes came back. So I pulled it again.
Then it occurred to me - I never did explicitly reload the drivers from the CD. With both Win2Kand XP, plug and play found everything and never asked for a CD. I still have it, so I got out the card again and put it back in, and now it wont even boot - it got to the end of the BIOS and just before the normal "Verifying DMI pool data" I saw "Updating ESCD . . . Success" then the first white Windows scrollbar ran across, then just a blank screen forever.
I found a webpage saying that SoundBlaster PCI128's can do that, and I should set the Advanced Chipset Features to Memory Hole 15M-16M. Tried that and nothing was different.
I wonder - does the slot make a difference? The one thing I can think of that is different between the first attempt weeks ago when the sound card seemed to cause the frequent screen freezes and now when its presence prevents a boot, is that I had to replace the old modem. I had had an ISA modem that worked fine for years, and just couldn't get it to work with XP so a friend gave me one out of his machine, a PCI modem. So I figure the assignment of PCI slots is different now.
Anywhere to start?
Another clue? I wouldnt think it would help to have the drivers loaded before booting, but I figured I would pull the card again, load from the CD, and restart. But the CD won't go past its first screen. I click to select English from the splash screen, and it goes to another screen where it just hangs.
Sigh. I don't plan to listen to any more music than I ever did, but I recently got a DVD drive, and would like to watch a DVD every now and then
It came with a Soundblaster PCI128 and Windows 98. Sound was fine. When I upgraded to Win2K Pro after a while, I found the screen freezing a lot - several times an hour the cursor arrow would just stop dead, no mouse or keyboard response, nothing to do but hit the reset button. Someone here on the Forum suggested the sound card was the culprit so I tried pulling it, and presto - the screen freezes went to once every several days. I had no idea why that would be the case, but hey - I don't listen to much on my computer, so that was that.
I recently upgraded to XP Pro and was curious to see it that would make a difference, so I put it back in, and the frequent freezes came back. So I pulled it again.
Then it occurred to me - I never did explicitly reload the drivers from the CD. With both Win2Kand XP, plug and play found everything and never asked for a CD. I still have it, so I got out the card again and put it back in, and now it wont even boot - it got to the end of the BIOS and just before the normal "Verifying DMI pool data" I saw "Updating ESCD . . . Success" then the first white Windows scrollbar ran across, then just a blank screen forever.
I found a webpage saying that SoundBlaster PCI128's can do that, and I should set the Advanced Chipset Features to Memory Hole 15M-16M. Tried that and nothing was different.
I wonder - does the slot make a difference? The one thing I can think of that is different between the first attempt weeks ago when the sound card seemed to cause the frequent screen freezes and now when its presence prevents a boot, is that I had to replace the old modem. I had had an ISA modem that worked fine for years, and just couldn't get it to work with XP so a friend gave me one out of his machine, a PCI modem. So I figure the assignment of PCI slots is different now.
Anywhere to start?
Another clue? I wouldnt think it would help to have the drivers loaded before booting, but I figured I would pull the card again, load from the CD, and restart. But the CD won't go past its first screen. I click to select English from the splash screen, and it goes to another screen where it just hangs.
Sigh. I don't plan to listen to any more music than I ever did, but I recently got a DVD drive, and would like to watch a DVD every now and then
