Soyo Dragon Plus + Audigy + WinXP solution!

blkntan

Junior Member
Nov 5, 2001
5
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Finally! Nightmare over!

After hours of frustration and fruitless calls to Soyo and Creative, I was able to successfully install the Audigy Platinum EX on my Soyo Dragon Plus mobo with WinXP Pro!!

The key was to use PCI slot 4 (5 works too I think, but wanted the daughter card to be below the main card). Once I did that, things worked flawlessly. Sounds a little screwy that slots 1 - 3 = no go, wish Via and Creative would get their respective acts together!

For anyone thinking they have a similar prob, my symptoms were as follows:
- When running the Creative installation CD it would get to the point where it was installing the drivers (97%) and would lock up, or
- If I tried to install them manually it would either lock up or after rebooting and logging in it would lock, or
- Sometimes I would get BSOD's at various points of installation, or
- Would run installation successfully (usually in Safe Mode) and upon reboot would not have the drivers loaded
- Inevitably, it would eventually toast my WinXP installation completely and I would start from scratch (went through that at least a dozen times)

Nevertheless, all is good once again and it has been rock solid ever since. Tried just about every other suggestion and trick before I stumbled across this and nothing worked. So hopefully, if you are in the same boat, keep that card out of PCI slots 1 - 3 and you should see success.

Blk`N`Tan

System info (now working!):
Lian Li PC-68 case
Soyo Dragon Plus (Bios 2BA1)
Athlon XP 1900+ (Retail HSF)
2 x 256MB Crucial Ram DDR PC2100
2 x Maxtor DiamondMax Plus D740X 60GB 7200RPM
24x 10x 40x Plextor CDRW
16x Pioneer DVD
PNY Verto GeForce3 Ti 500 w/Det 21.83
Sound Blaster Audigy Platinum Ex
Enermax 350W power supply

 

blkntan

Junior Member
Nov 5, 2001
5
0
0

Update

Just talked to Soyo to let them know what the solution was since they couldn't seem to figure it out during the hours of talking to them about it. The tech's reaction: "huh, that makes sense 'cause slots 4 and 5 are busmaster slots and the firewire on board the soundcard would need that."

Well thanks for figuring that out AFTER the fact!
:|
 

blkntan

Junior Member
Nov 5, 2001
5
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0
Don't know the specs on PCI 2.2, but the Soyo website says the Dragon Plus is v2.2 compliant and I can guarantee that only 2 of the 5 PCI slots have bus mastering capability. Would be very nice if all 5 did!
 

luv2chill

Diamond Member
Feb 22, 2000
4,611
0
76
does it say somewhere on Soyo's site that only slots four and five are bus-mastering or are you guaranteeing this based on some tech's words?

The thing is, I was pretty sure that all slots have bus mastering in today's boards.

Thanks

l2c
 

Shuelessjo

Member
Nov 28, 2001
144
0
0
Just this past Sunday I installed a SB Audigy (OEM version) on a Soyo Dragon Plus with WinXP Pro and I had not problems. I just installed the CD that came with the Audigy and right after that I installed the current driver update (as of this Sunday) and it all worked fine. This was after having trouble with a couple of Epox 8KHA+ boards that would either not recognize any of my keyboards or not boot from anything.


Joseph