XP won't let me change IRQ numbers!

[Master Toddy]

Okay, I've figured it out. It's my mobo (soyo k7v dragun plus - kt266a). It's not the vid. card, sound card, or windows xp - those all work fine. How have I come to this conclusion, you ask? Well, remember the last post I made that talked about the pci slots not working? I decided to try my TV Tuner in the top four slots and it wouldn't work either, and that IRQ signing problem? I'm pretty sure it's not a windows xp thing, because it always assign whatever card I put in the last (6th) pci slot - farthest away from the video card - the same irq as the video card! Which explains, why, when I tried my TV Tuner in the 6th slot, it would say failed to initialize video. Thank you Soyo. "six PCI slots" - yeah, only one works. So, what do I do now? I'm sure my motherboard is still under warranty, I bought it back in August. Could I possibly send it back and exchange it for a new one? Would exchanging the mobo for an identical one possibly fix the problem, or would I still have the same PCI slot problems? There isn't anything I could do that could possibly fix the PCI slot problems without having to send it back, is there (because I wouldn't be with a PC for about a week - ew)?

 

[Mictlantecuhtli]

Changing the motherboard to an identical one won't help. There are two things I'd try:

1 - Do as Phantasm66 instructed in his first reply AND from BIOS, section PnP/PCI Configuration, change "Resources Controlled By" to Manual, select Force Update ESCD, and Allocate IRQ to USB.

Now, if the board isn't a weird one, you should see a list like
PIRQ_0 use IRQ No. Auto
PIRQ_1 use IRQ No. Auto
PIRQ_2 use IRQ No. Auto
etc.
You should see in the right side which card(s) use which IRQ. Change the settings so that each of them has their own IRQs, if possible. Leave IRQs 14 & 15 alone, they're meant for IDE.

2 - Reinstall the operating system without ACPI. This requires that you copy the I386 directory to hard disk and edit txtsetup.sif, replace line "ACPIEnable=2" with "ACPIEnable=0", or use unattended setup specifying that option. I've also heard rumors that you can hit some key during booting that would allow you to select a different HAL, I'm not sure about that.

 

[Master Toddy]

I have done as Phantasm suggested. Thanks for trying to help me, but I think I may just get a different board (different model than what I have). It's way more trouble than it's worth - I've already re-installed Windows XP twice this week and unless I absolutely have to, I don't really feel like reinstalling it again.

 

[harry_platypus]

DO NOT ATTEMPT TO CHANGE YOUR HAL CONFIGURATION! This guy's "advice" will almost certainly hose your machine and you'll have to re-install XP. You would be MUCH better off to reinstall the OS, selecting a non-ACPI HAL from the very beginning as was recommended at the bottom of the thread, cuz changing it after the fact is a recipe for disaster. Anyone who would recommend such a boneheaded move is either ignorant or is purposely leading you down the garden path (to a cliff).

I cannot believe XP allows you to do this without some kind of warning. But anyway, if you look into it you'll find this warning from Microsoft...
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;237556

WARNING: Note that you should not attempt to change from an ACPI HAL to a standard HAL or from a standard HAL to a ACPI HAL under any circumstances. Doing so will result in your computer not starting properly or at all. This occurs because the Plug and Play device tree that would be currently loaded is for ACPI, and it does not get reconstructed or revert to a standard HAL Plug and Play device tree. Because of this (the device tree structures being drastically different), the system is unaware of any hardware changes after the computer restarts to include the location of the boot device. Microsoft does not recommend or support this procedure as it will result in data loss.

Good luck!
- Harry

Originally posted by Phantasm66
With the ACPI Hardware abstraction layer, you CAN'T really change IRQs in the operating system. And its likely if you change settings in the BIOS, it will just ignore those as well. Moving the card MAY help to change the IRQ, I don't know but again it might well not. ACPI pretty much gives the OS license to do what it wants with IRQs, and you will probably find loads of PCI devices lumped onto one IRQ and governed by ACPI. This is by design so that IRQ conflicts become a thing of the past. But as you have discovered, sometimes it becomes necessary.

Here is how you could overcome this.
-----------------------------------------------

You Do This At Your Own Risk.
--------------------------------------


1)Right Click My Computer, Select Manage.
2)

[RECIPE FOR DISASTER DELETED]

15)Reboot and pray.

[RIIIIIIGHT!]

Hopefully all will be well when you reboot. A number of things will be different. One will be that some advanced power management things DO NOT WORK. Particularly, its likely that if you select "shutdown" from the start menu, it will just shut the OS down, and you will be left with the old message "its now safe to turn your computer off" instead of the actual power going off, i.e. you will loose the ability to power down using software and will have to press the power off button on your case. You may also get IRQ conflicts because you will have lost advanced IRQ management and will instead have to rely on the BIOS trying to do the best it can to make everything work. Try to set "Plug and Play OS installed" to NO in your BIOS if you have such a setting. You might also want to run a "Reset ESCD Data" as well first time round.

Good luck. You might need it.

 

[Justin]

Phant:

Here's something interesting.

I tested it out myself. You are right about IRQ assignment in BIOS meaning nothing to an ACPI enabled machine with an ACPI HAL installed - BUT, when it came to ISA devices, when I told the board to specify an IRQ for a certain ISA slot, it WOULD assign that IRQ to it in windows XP. This was done with an ABIT BH6. It would only do this with my ISA sound card(sound blaster 16).

 

[Skik]

Hi all..

New problem.. Xp also put all my devices on IRQ number 9. Now i had problems with the grapics and sound. So i followd the instructions to chance to standard PC .... after a while i got the system up and running under the 'standard pc' settings but the problem stayed the same..

Now my question .. is it possible to switch back to the 'ACPI' settings??? Because updating the drivers doesn't find that profile anymore ...

thanks in advance...
Nico

 

[Greenspirit78]

Hi everybody

Skik - i changed to standard PC and have switched back to ACPI computer by using system restore, everything works neet so far (it didnt fix my problem but it was great fun).

As a standard PC i could manually assign the IRQs in BIOS without a problem and XP picked them up. Using ACPI it is impossible to change IRQ settings, microsoft say this is not a problem, it is by design:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;315278

 

[WindozeUser368]

I got a question. I'm also having this crisis, and was wonder is it possible to change the IRQ in Windows 98? Does Windows 98 have ACPI??? Cus this is getting on my nerves, if installing Windows 98 will allow me to change the IRQs, let me know!

 

[Mictlantecuhtli]

98 uses ACPI if it finds one. I'm not sure how you can change it though. In general, I find 98's device handling more flexible than NT5's (at the cost of tedious rebooting, of course).

 

[tgidkp]

as small payment for all of the great tips contained in this thread, i have registered to post this reply with what worked for me...

i dont know why that "harry_platypus" is so grumpy, but it may just be that he is the bonehead.

changing to a standard pc on the device manager tree, as advised by "Phantasm66" worked beautifully. the only adaptation i had to make was switching the pci cards around after the switch from ACPI. it seems that my soundcard didn't like irq 9 for some reason.

but anyways, the world is a better place now that i know how to defeat microsoft's ploy to sieze my hardware configuration. i feel like a real man.

as a final word, if i had known you could install a standard pc HAL from the start i would have. according to the windows knowledge base, you may setup a standard pc HAL by pushing F5 immediately upon entering windows XP setup (the screen actually says "push F6 to install third party scsi...").

 

[vilex]

Help!

Ok I have a major problem here. I bought this M-Audio Revolution 7.1 sound card and I've been trying to change its IRQ because the thing is sharing IRQ11 with 3 other things and the card is operating oddly because of this.

I'm running XP and I switched the HAL to Standard PC like what Phant said. All this did was reaquire all the drivers for everything and disable advanced power management, and I still can't change the IRQ of the sound card. I tried going to device manager and switching it there but there's still no option. I've tried switching it in the bios, I have Cheepobios which is a modified AMI bios because my original AMI bios didn't even have IRQ options. There's no "Switch IRQ To:" type setting in the BIOS but there are options to change the "IRQ Priority" of the Slots. These did nothing as well. I also switched Plug And Play Aware O/S to disabled, and I disabled ACPI aware O/S.

I've switched the sound card around in the case and it's pretty much like slots 2-5 are set to IRQ 11. Slot 1 is set to IRQ 5 which is sharing with my video card so I can't use that. Here's the list of IRQs:

IRQ 0 System timer
IRQ 1 PC/AT Enhanced PS/2 Keyboard (101/102-Key)
IRQ 3 Communications Port (COM2)
IRQ 4 Communications Port (COM1)
IRQ 5 RADEON 9000 SERIES
IRQ 6 Standard floppy disk controller
IRQ 8 System CMOS/real time clock
IRQ 10 MPU-401 Compatible MIDI Device
IRQ 11 SiS 7001 PCI to USB Open Host Controller
IRQ 11 SiS 7001 PCI to USB Open Host Controller
IRQ 11 M-Audio Revolution
IRQ 11 Linksys LNE100TX Fast Ethernet Adapter(LNE100TX v4) #3
IRQ 12 Microsoft PS/2 Mouse
IRQ 13 Numeric data processor
IRQ 14 Primary IDE Channel
IRQ 15 Secondary IDE Channel

I have a ECS K7S5A motherboard with SiS 735 chipset.

Please, any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks

 

[vilex]

Solved

I figured it out! Basically what I did was keep plug and play aware o/s disabled in the BIOS and leave ACPI aware o/s enabled. I enabled ACPI HAL in windows XP and I disabled Com 1 and Com 2 to free up IRQs. When I rebooted I managed to get the soundcard by itself in IRQ4, taking com1's place.

However, giving the soundcard its own IRQ solved nothing, so I'm returning it. Man I hate computers. Its only when you are up till 6 AM trying to fix something, that you realize you are actually being owned by the computer, not the other way around

 

[Mictlantecuhtli]

Originally posted by tgidkp
if i had known you could install a standard pc HAL from the start i would have. according to the windows knowledge base, you may setup a standard pc HAL by pushing F5 immediately upon entering windows XP setup (the screen actually says "push F6 to install third party scsi...").

Funny how these useful features are always undocumented or buried deep into the knowledge base

 

[Mictlantecuhtli]

Re: Solved

Originally posted by vilex
Man I hate computers. Its only when you are up till 6 AM trying to fix something, that you realize you are actually being owned by the computer, not the other way around

Remember that it's the software that controls the hardware. Software can be changed

 

[grammjr]

I have read through this whole thread, my on board sound skips badly anytime the processor is working, it is sitting on IRQ 18. I also bought a sound card an put it and it to skipped. So back to the on board and AC97. Currently set up as ACPI.
WHat I want to know, is there a way to do a poll of my computer and get a list of all devices and their associated IRQ?
Thanks

 

[grammjr]

Never mind.. I am stupid...:dead: I found it in the view, BUT I also found possibly the problem.. I reloaded to Standard HAL and the audio device is sharing with my ethernet AND Promise SCSI card.
Problem, even with this thing in Standad, I still cannot change the IRQ.
Help.

 

[poertner_1274]

When you installed your new sound card did you disable onboard sound in the bios? This might be a problem conflicting with it in some way. You could try that as a fix, and it could possibly be assigned to another IRQ when you do this.

BTW :wave: Welcome to TechSpot :wave:

 

[grammjr]

Yes, I made sure it was diabled in my BIOS. It was a cheap card so did not give it much credence.
The only time the issue is there is play wave file off the HD or my stored music, the CD and line in have no problem.

Thanks for the welcome

 

[leogon20015]

Hi, I have a Radeon All in Wonder card in my PC. Microsoft tells that with ACPI working in XP is no problem to sharings IRQs, but I use to capture video with my card, and the first advise about tweaking capturing for the best results always says "it's imperative not to share the video card IRQ with any other device in the PC", mainly the sound card.
So there is the contradiction.
I have an idea, why not use the posibility of booting de PC with different hardware profiles?
So you can boot normally the PC and go to create a new hardware profile, and check mark the option of ask for a hardware profile at the start. You can name that hardware profile as "capture video" or whatever. Then you restart the PC and choose that hardware profile, and then you start to change things.
Change the acpi hal to standard pc, but also disable all hardware devices that you don't need for capture video (com ports, parallel port, modem, network card, etc) if you don't have a USB mouse disable that also. At the end of the operation disable all TSR software that you don't need to capture including of course any antivirus.
At the end of all this,reboot and try to asign the IRQs the way you need. Then you have two options when you boot the computer, one for normal use and the other for capturing video.
Maybe this is not the solution for every case, but it works for me.

 

[Sippy Cup]

I have had a lot of the same problems everyone else has had. I also have an M-Audio card, but mine is a Delta 1010LT. When I record with it, I get a lot of terrible static sounds. I posted on another forum and was told that the problem was due to IRQ sharing, so I tried the whole thing with switching to Standard PC and was also left without a way to change back to ACPI (which I needed to do after my ATA controller was left without any resources, and my hard drive was running on PIO mode). All this stuff about 23 IRQs and ACPI and APIC and HAL is all new to me. I wish I understood it better so I could fix this problem I'm having, but after reading that changing the IRQ didn't fix the other guy's problem with his M-Audio card, I'm beginning to get a little worried.

If anyone is feeling charitable, link me up with some literature on this 23 IRQs thing.. and HALs. Oh, and if anyone is successfully recording live audio with an M-Audio Delta 1010LT, PLEASE share your setup with me, because I have to fix this problem. Thanks

 

[vynum]

XP Pro Reinstall Choosing HAL

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;299340

Go to the Microsoft URL above. This will tell you how to do a reinstall and how to choose the different HALS up install.

Here is the meat of it just in case this article gets lost off of MS's website:

To force in a system Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) during an upgrade or installation of Windows XP, note that during the Text-mode phase of Setup, you receive the following informational message across the bottom of the screen:

Press F6 if you need to install a third-party SCSI or RAID driver.
When this message appears, press F5. You can now make HAL choices by viewing the different options. Note that if you instead press F7, the Standard PC HAL loads, and the ACPI compliance check is bypassed.

After you press F5, you will see the following list of computer types (listed in bold). A brief description of each HAL is included below as a reference.

ACPI Multiprocessor PC: Use for a multiple-processor ACPI computer
ACPI Uniprocessor PC: Use for a ACPI multiple-processor board but with a single processor installed
Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) PC: Use for a single processor motherboard with single processor.
Compaq SystemPro Multiprocessor or 100% Compatible: Use for a Compaq Systempro computer.
MPS Uniprocessor PC: Use on non-ACPI computers dual processor motherboard with a single processor installed
MPS Multiprocessor PC: Non-ACPI computers with a dual processor running
Standard PC: Any Standard PC, non-ACPI, or non-MPS. Could be a 386, 486, Pentium, Pentium II, or Pentium III
Standard PC with C-Step i486
Other

The screen only displays two computers types at a time. You must scroll up using the arrow keys to see the complete list. For additional information about related topics, click the article numbers below to view the articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
237556 Troubleshooting Windows 2000 Hardware Abstraction Layer Issues

 

[Gadget123]

irq question

Hi,

I was reading your posts with interest and wanted to ask a question. This is my first post, so am not sure if my system info will show up. My MB is an Abit KT7-Raid running with XP. I recently bought a MSI FX5200 TV128 Vivo and it pretty much worked ok, except I had problems with the packaged InterVideo software seeing my Creative PCI 16 soundcard and other 3rd party software issues conflicting. So, I bought a Creative SB 16 4.1 card..no luck. Returned it and bought a Creative Audigy LS..no luck. In messing around with the drivers (updates/uninstall etc) I couldn't boot up. Had to call MS. I am back up, but now Video card has no tv picture to add to not seeing the sound card.

I am real close to just upgrading(wanted to anyway) to a Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe MB with 1G DDR and AMD 2600 Barton core. Plan on a new SATA HD and fresh install of XP. I have noticed in various forums that MB's have 2 controllers with 8 IRQ's each..total 16IRQ's...yet some people list having up to 25 IRQ's. I don't think by 3-4 yr old MB has ACPI except for two settings and I can't find APIC functions at all. The sound card,video card, 2 USB controllers and about 2 other items are on IRQ 11. I have moved the cards around with no luck.

Questions:
Will the planned new Asus MB handle IRQ's better and give me up to 25 with XP by selecting Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) PC: Use for a single processor motherboard with single processor?

What creates 25 IRQ's in a seemingly 16 IRQ environment.

I hope I solve the problem..I don't think I am getting the full features of my Video card.

Thanks

 

[grog]

Microsoft does not recommend that you change the HAL that is installed during the Windows XP Setup process. When you change from the ACPI HAL to the Standard PC HAL, you must reinstall the operating system, and ACPI functionality is lost.

In some rare instances, you may need to have control over a resource assignment. You can manually configure resources in Windows only if you are using Standard PC HAL, and even then you may not be able to configure some devices. The device must support manually setting of resources.

For additional information, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
237556 How to Troubleshoot Windows 2000 Hardware Abstraction Layer Issues

252420 General Description of IRQ Sharing in Windows

314107 How to Specify a Specific or Third-Party HAL During Windows XP Setup

Added: When installing XP disable PNP in Bios this is a left over from 95 and can cause problems.

Enable ACPI in Bios ACPI does a much better job of managing IRQ asignments.

Most hardware can share IRQ ports the sound and video don't do to well. But moving PCI sound cards will sometimes move them to another IRQ port.

 

[sargaana]

can't change IRQ settings

I reinstalled WinXP with Standard PC HAL, and disabled Plug-and-Play OS in BIOS. Still, XP does not allow changing IRQ settings. There is no option for IRQ assignment in BIOS. Need to assign dedicated IRQ to my NVidia graphics card. Any ideas?

 

[StormBringer]

try disabling ACPI. Not sure it will work for you but it should let you manually assign IRQs. Its been known to work with older hardware that didn't like the way XP handles IRQ settings.