Got a bit of a wierd one..

got 2 machines, both AMD 1GHz... Both using Windows XP Pro, one with SP1, one without.

On one of them, a 3Com sportster modem was added (its external) and now... the mouse and keyboard don't work sometimes when Windows loads.

You can reboot and it still won't work, although sometimes... a reboot cures it.

I thought... hmmm... gotta be the modem, Since though, on the other machines, which is my dad's i've come over to France to visit him and fit a modem, so I can keep in touch with him that way... This particular modem is a Hayes Internal 56k modem, which requires you to install the drivers prior to installing the modem, i didnt do this to start off with, i installed the modem, rebooted and the mouse and keyboard wouldnt work at all... ah ha ! I thought....

Took the modem out, rebooted... M+K worked again, I installed the software, re-installed the modem, Windows picked it up...all's good

My problem is though, I've still got this problem at a lady's house back home with the sportster and every now and again my dad's machine's doing it to.

wierd wierd wierd.

both PC's are using Gigabyte GA-7ZXE's, both are 1GHz t'birds and XP as i've said.

My dad's has a SBLive!, where the other only has a SB128 PCI.

Nothing else is similar really.

I'm stumped really... this was never a problem, when both machines had WinME, although WinME is Y-fronts

Any help would be appreciated guys !

Thx in advance

Looks like you have run out of free interrupts.

Start with checking your OS's device-manager for yellow exclamation marks. Remove those items concerned, they should re-install at the next boot.

If you have a USB-printer, remove the LPT1 from your BIOS, then also remove it from your OS. This frees up an IRQ.
Find out which COM-port the modem is on. Remove the other unused COM-port(s) from your BIOS and then also from your OS.
If those modems can be set to use a fixed (rather than PNP) IRQ, assign that IRQ in your BIOS as "used by legacy" or whatever.

SB-soundcards are notorious for gobbling up IRQs.

I use Win2000, don't know XP, but you may have a setting for sharing IRQs.
Hope this helps

the only thing i've noticed really...there's no options for anything ACPI in the BIOS.

and under the "Computer" tab in device manager, its says "Standard PC", not the usual "APCI Uniprocessor PC"
therefore it won't shut itself down either, it just says, "Its now safe to turn off your PC"

:-\



the only other thing i can think of is, both have the on-board audio disabled in Windows, coz there isn't a proper option for it in the BIOS.

So, no exclamation marks other than that.

The IRQ's are 1 for the (ISA) "PC/AT Enhanced PS/2 Keyboard", 12 for the (ISA) Mouse

(PCI) 5 for the modem, which shares with the USB controller

:]

to shut a Standard PC down automatically, go into device-manager, on the top-left click on "View" and select "show hidden devices".
If you find an entry "NT Apm/Legacy Support" or something like it, expand it, right-click in the "interface node", select properties and select "Enable device" and change the text in the little window below also to "enable". Win2000 installs power management for it, and hopefully so does XP. That is all.

On your desktop, rightclick My Computer, select Manage, System Info, Hardware Resources. Check under Conflicts/Sharing and IRQs. This should give more info.
Report back if you find anything there

Thx for the suggestion... although, unfortunately, that's not an option on here.

Attached is a picture of my/his IRQ's.... looks pretty straight forward to me

See if that winmodem has any jumpers to select an IRQ. If so try to "redirect" it to IRQ 7 (normally LPT1-printer) or IRQ 3 or 4.

Better still, remove COM1 and COM2 as described above, uninstall your modem (physically), uninstall modem software.
Then switch PC off, reinsert modem and Windoze should reinstall the modem (hopefully on one of those free IRQ's)