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Windows 2000 professsional irq problem (1 Viewer)

Paresh_M

Auditioning
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Jul 31, 2001
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It seems that my sound, video, and ethernet cards all share irq 9 and the ability to assign irq's has been disabled. Due to this sharing a sharp sound comes out of the speakers when any sort of action is done. Can I go about fixing this without doing any hardware changes?
 

Rob Gillespie

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I wouldn't have thought the 'sharp' sound is being caused by the IRQ assignment. That's more likely to be a driver issue with the sound card, a hardware problem or even a bad connection.
Windows 2000 will put all those devices onto virutal IRQs, usually 9. This is quite normal and is nothing to worry about. I think you can get around it if you really want to, but I don't know the specifics on how to do it.
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Shayne Lebrun

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Jun 17, 1999
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When your computer is booting, there should be a 'press F2 for setup' option or the like. Hitting this at the correct time will take you into your BIOS settings.
Look for a setting called 'Plug and Play OS'. Set it to 'no.' Save settings and exit. This should help.
Be careful mucking about in yer bios.
 

Mike Voigt

Supporting Actor
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I'd agree with Rob here - this is more likely a problem with the drivers than with Win2K itself.

Mike
 

Glenise

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Feb 5, 2001
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Are you video, sound and network cards on expansion boards or built on the motherboard.
If all three cards on on expansion cards, then move one card to a different pci slot.
It should assign it a different irq.
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Rob Gillespie

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Glenise, I'm not sure that would work. 2000 gives such devices a virtual IRQ, so physical placement may have no effect.
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Robert Saccone

Premium
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Jan 3, 2000
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596
Open a command prompt or pick run on the start menu and type winmsd. Look under the IRQ section. If you see multiple devices listed with the same IRQ # you can be sure they are sharing the same interrupt. This is not necessarily the cause of your problem but it maybe. The reason it could be is due to how much time the device driver associated with each device spends in its ISR (Interrupt Service Routine). Since the interrupt is shared across multiple devices each ISR is called to service an interrupt from that IRQ#. To compound the issue, once a driver's ISR responds that the interrupt was for that device and has been serviced W2K will walk the remaining drivers in the ISR chain and call them anyway. This done to insure that interrupts close in time are not missed. If one of these drivers is not a good citizen and spends too much time in its ISR you may get symptoms as you described. If you can move the device to its own IRQ it may help.
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John Morton

Stunt Coordinator
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Feb 11, 2001
Messages
120
This is a last resort, as stated earlier, if you're not computer savy, be very careful with your bios!!
I ran accross this same exact problem with a user in our building (I'm a network admin). She had SB live audio, built in 3com ethernet, and a GeForce?? video card. The system had set the video, audio, and ethernet all on IRQ 10. The ethernet card would drop connection at random. Certain video modes would cause a black screen. She also randomly had random sounds or no sound from the speakers. Nobody could fix it (for 2 months = even with a scratch rebuild and locking her down). I finally made the time to look at it myself, went into the bios, and added the PCI sound card with a reserved IRQ of 10. When the PC booted back up, it re-identified the ethernet card, sound card, and video card. The sound card was alone on IRQ 10. The ethernet and video went to 11 with the PCI handler. I then downloaded and installed new video drivers and her PC has been working top notch ever since. Windows ME/2000 are great operating systems, the best GUIs to date (IMO), but there are always going to be exceptions when an OS needs "hand holding".
Good luck!
 

David Klem

Agent
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Jun 30, 1997
Messages
35
The only way to get around this "virtual" irq problem on some motherboards is the disabling ACPI.
I believe there's a way to remove it if you have already installed win2k. You need to go through the Device Manager, and then under the "computer" device, it will list the ACPI computer. You will need to change this to "Standard PC".
The way I did it was with a reinstall of win2k. During the bootup screen from the bootcd or the bootdisks, when it says "hit F6 for other drivers", you'll need to hit F5. Then pick something other than the ACPI kernel.
Dave
 

Wayne Bundrick

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May 17, 1999
Messages
2,358
David is correct, IRQ sharing is perfectly normal for computers with ACPI.
But the real problem is with the sound card drivers that can't cope with it. Let me guess.... this is a Creative Labs product isn't it?
 

John Thomas

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Mar 23, 2000
Messages
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I've got the same issue as the initial poster; in 2000 I have several items (video, sound, nic) on IRQ 9. Usually wouldn't be that big of an issue with ACPI however whenever I utilize the sound (Winamp, for example) and start scrolling through some websites, the sound will cut out and won't come back. Occasionally I'll receive an error such as "Driver IRQL not less or equal" and have to reboot. This an issue with those (video & sound) drivers specifically?
Thanks.
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[Edited last by John Thomas on August 13, 2001 at 03:29 AM]
 

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