IRQ Assignments and XP

[Mark Lamutt]

Does a computer's bios assign IRQs to PCI cards installed in a computer or does the operating system? I'm having a problem with my sound card and I want to assign it to its own IRQ, rather than letting it share an IRQ with my HDTV card. How do I do this?

[invaliduser88]

IRQ assignment usually can be overriden in Bios (depends on your bios).

[gcutler]

I haven't had to assign a IRQ in years. Maybe your bios isn't setup for plug and play correctly or maybe your XP plug and play "Drivers" are not installed properly. When you go into your XP hardware profile, does anything show up with an "X" or "!" ?

[Mark Lamutt]

No - everything looks correct in the device manager, and XP tells me that my sound card is working properly. I'll dig through the bios tonight and see if I can reassign the IRQ there. Thanks guys.
This is a last ditch look for a fix before I look for another sound card.

[gcutler]

Could your problem with your sound card be driver based? I had a problem with my sound card driver (that the next driver version fixed) it would play sound tooo fast, everything sounded like Alvyn and the Chipmunks.

What exactly is the problem.

Unless you are getting Lockups, or reboots or bluescreens, the IRQ conflict may not be the issue?

[Mark Lamutt]

IRQ wasn't the issue. I discovered how to change the IRQ settings in my bios, but it didn't solve my problem.

The problem is when I use a particular program to do timeshifting of NTSC television, captured through a provideo mpeg-2 tuner/capture card, the audio comes out extremely garbled. I've tried the last 4 drivers of my sound card and the last 3 of the provideo card all together, and it hasn't helped.

[gcutler]

Originally posted by Mark Lamutt
The problem is when I use a particular program to do timeshifting of NTSC television, captured through a provideo mpeg-2 tuner/capture card, the audio comes out extremely garbled. I've tried the last 4 drivers of my sound card and the last 3 of the provideo card all together, and it hasn't helped.

Actually I have been doing stuff like that with an external capture device. I have found that not every program is equal. Is there another program you can try? Also it may be the amount of memory or CPU available (or the software config of the balance of resources) Some SW will allow you to balanace Audio vs Video resources so you can get perfect video but junky audio or visa versa or a balance of the two. I've even seen it where until you register the product it won't work perfectly (one SW I eventally registered had audio 11 seconds out of sync until registered and would not work beyond a 15 minute recording.)

[James_F]

Zac, you sure you don't own part of Turtle Beach? :D

[CoriBright]

All IRQs being assigned to the same address is normal in both WindowsXP and in Windows 2000 O/Ss. Should you really want to assign them individually, the way to do it is to disable ACPI in the BIOS.

As far as Windows2000 and XP are concerned, Plug and Play should aslo be disabled in the BIOS.

Cari

[gcutler]

Originally posted by James_F
Zac, you sure you don't own part of Turtle Beach? :D

I think Zac just likes Turtles and the Sand ;)

[Mark Lamutt]

The only reason I wanted to try to reassign IRQs is that is what the maudio tech support guys came up with. I wasn't really hopeful that it would help, and it didn't.

At this point I'm going back and forth between picking up a santa cruz to try and replacing my M/B with the same model except with on board audio.

Which brings me to my next stupid computer question of the day: If I swap out my m/b with the same model except for the on board sound, will I have to reinstall XP?

[gcutler]

Theorhetically the Plug and Play should pickup all the difference (you may need to install manually the sound board drivers as they are probably not installed, and possibly not part of XPs install.)

But there is an issue where differences in hardware may cause a need to call MS about the XP authorization #. I have never seen it happen, but if the motherboard is just different enough, it will see many little hardware changes (even if old drivers are perfectly fine) but XP may raise a red flag. But again, reinstall of XP should not be an issue.

[Mike123abc]

The only reason you had to worry about IRQs in the past was because the MSos were too primative to handle them. So, each card maker had to make their own interrupt driver and put it into place. There of course was no standard, so they did not work together at all. Each one had to have its own IRQ because there was no method of sharing them. You had to manually make sure there were no devices sharing IRQs. The only reason this kinda worked was that different classes of devices had certain IRQs by default because the original IBM devices had that IRQ number (i.e. keyboard, mouse, printer, etc) and manufacturers tended to default to the same one.

Now finally Microsoft after ignoring IRQs for 18 years works out a method of managing them. Now IRQ sharing is no problem because the IRQ software is now smart enough to see what caused the interrupt and pass it along to the correct driver. So, unless you are trying to run a driver that is 4 years out of date you should have no problems with IRQ sharing.

[CoriBright]

You won't have to re-install XP but you may have to do a Repair Installation if the chipset is different on the new mobo.

To do a Repair Installation:

Boot with the XP CD. Ignore the F2 for the Recovery Console. Go thru the F8 and accept the EULA. When Windows looks for itself and finds itself on the hard drive, it will offer a Repair Installation option. You will have to enter the cd key again... and re-activate at the end of it. If it won't go thru on the internet, choose the activate by phone option, and just explain the situation.

The rest of the programs, files, folders, documents etc etc on the hard drive will be fine, but the WindowsUpdates will have gone... as will the SP1 if you had installed it. If you had the SP1 installed, the files are still there... inside the Windows folders you'll find a folder called ServicePackFiles. In the i386 folder, you'll find the setup file.

If you hadn't installed the SP1, it's quite a good time to download it and install it.

Cari

[Mark Lamutt]

Thanks for the advice, everyone. I'll let you know what I end up doing.