Soundcard causing the system to lock up? It's also stealing my parallel port!

[x0lution]

I have an Asus A7V motherboard and Diamond Multimedia Monster MX300 sound card. Firstly, my computer keeps locking up and I think it's the sound card that's doing it. It'll run fine for hours on end, but if I open anything that uses A3D the system locks up solid (mouse won't move, ctrl-alt-del won't reboot...). It'll play that A3D startup sound then starts normal for about half a second then locks up.

The sound card has also stolen my parallel port. In device manager, the ECP Printer Port (LPT1) has a red 'x' next to it. If you click on properties and go to the resources tab, 'interrupt request' and 'direct memory access' have a red circle with a line across them (what are those things called anyway?), they're set to 05 and 01 (respectively). If you go back into device manager and look at the properties for Monster Sound II Sound Blaster Pro Emulation, it's interrupt request is set to 05 and it has two direct memory access entries, one set to 03 and the other to 01.

Has anybody had the same problem or know how to remedy this? Again, thanks for any info.

 

[jmorrell]

If your are using the drivers that came with the MX300, get rid of them and get the Aureal Vortex reference drivers. The Diamond drivers were very buggy, and often caused exactly the problems you are experiencing. Get the Aureal reference drivers from www.vortexofsound.com. You want the ones for the Vortex 2 cards.

 

[x0lution]

i tried searching earlier for solutions to this problem and it seems to be pretty common, and on lots of other forums, people said that it didn't matter whether they used the reference drivers or the diamond drivers... you sure this will work?

 

[Moonchild]

Worked for me! I used to have a p2-400 with a GF2, everything worked fine. Upgraded to a amd 1gz and asus a7v mobo, and was getting random lockups in my games every 5 minutes or so.

Turned out it was the MX-300 drivers. I changed to the last Vortex2 reference drivers, and I no longer have any problems.

However, now I can't get my joystick to work!! It's getting power (it has a light that's on), but control panel says it's not connected. I checked device manager, it says the gameport is working fine. I even tried overwriting one of the Vortex joystick ini or vxd files with the same file from the MX-300 driver set, no luck there. Any ideas??!

 

[x0lution]

Well I guess i'll try using the reference drivers then, but does anyone know how to get the parallel port back?

 

[BuckNaked]

Definately go with the Reference drivers, and if your not playing any DOS games, I would also disable the SB emulation. Also I found sound cards to work best in PCI slot 3 on this board, and would suggest you use this sot if your not already.

One other thing, when I first got this card, I had problems with a command line placed in the autoexec.bat by Norton Anti-Virus conflicting with the two lines placed there by the soundcard for SB emulation. Might want to check that out also.

Dave

 

[jmorrell]

I agree with Buck_Naked. Install the reference drivers, then disable the SB emulation. The SB emulation can conflict with the parallel port as the SB 16 sometimes uses IRQ 7, the same one the parallel port uses. Disable SB emulation in Device Manager, then remove any "blaster" lines in autoexec.bat as well. You should have your parallel port working correctly with no conflicts when you reboot.

 

[x0lution]

Alright it appears to working now. Thanks guys.

I installed the reference drivers, installed the via 4-in-1 stuff (forgot to do that earlier), put a rem in front of the two lines in autoexec.bat that had to do with the sound card, and also remarked the same line in dosstart.bat. My parallel port is back, my sound is working right, and the system's not crashing. Thanks.