Forced IRQ's

I'm having problems between my Audio Interface (Aardvark Q10) and my Video Card (S3 Savage4). I'm running my Intel P4 D845GBV m'brd on Standard PC...NOT ACPI, in order to improve my Audio Processing performance. All I want to do is force the IRQ the Video has (it's taking 11 with my Audio Interface right now) to my 6th PCI slot. I tried doing it in the BIOS, and it accepts it there, but it apparently doesn't take when I go to msinfo32 to verify. I REALLY need help with this. Is there anywhere else I can force it?

Thanks,

George Le

 

I do and don't understand your post. Your S3 is an AGP card and you've appearantly set bios for its own interupt but now are having problems with audio in PCI #6 thats also trying to share IRQ #11 with the S3 ? Is that right? Is your audio card using two IRQ's like #11 shared and #5 by itself for DOS emulation? I think you'll find that your conflict is something other than your video card's interupt interfering with your sound card, but you should be able to force your audio to take a legacy setting in the bios using a different IRQ if your MB is advanced enough. Be aware that different PCI slots assign different IRQ's and no matter how hard you fight it, the easier solution is to juggle cards to different slots. You can also reserve an IRQ in device manager and release it, manually assigning an IRQ to a specific device. This will first require a reboot with the IRQ reserved but not assigned to any device. Then you should be able to free this up after the reboot and can manually assign it to a specific device. It sounds easy but, as you probably know, this can be a major pain in the backside. Disabling serial ports will also free up IRQ's if you get too frustrated and are so inclined. If I was familiar with your MB, I might be able to give you more specific guideance. Good Luck......

As an aside, its not uncommon to have as many as 4-5 devices sharing an interrupt in the higher memory ranges with today's MB's. Things aren't quite the way they used to be with hardware conflicts, but when something hangs - it sure cripples a system.

 

gplea

One of these MS KBA should help:

"A General Description of IRQ Sharing in Windows XP "
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;314068


"Description of PCI Bus IRQ Steering "
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;182604


"How to Disable PCI Bus IRQ Steering in Windows "
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;182628