Good IRQ configuration?

Hen_Dawg

Hen_Dawg

Hen_Dawg

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After my X-fi soundcard has been giving me numerous problems I decided to see what my IRQs are set up like since I heard a PCI slot switch can help.

This brought up other causes for concern, like my ethernet controller sharing with my graphics card.

Please can someone check below and say if I should change any IRQs/move the sound card. I know little about IRQs so is there anything to worry about? And could I see performance improvement by making changes.
Thanks :)

 
I had a problem with my X-FI card when I first got it. I couldn't have it in one PCI slot because then its IRQ clashed with the IRQ for the graphics card. So I had to unplug my TV card to put the X-Fi in there. I contacted the Epox people on an online forum and they said that the motherboard coudn't be patched BIOS wise to fix this or something.

They also said that I couldn't sort the IRQ problem. Helpful I thought, not!!

Then I found out that when you install Windows, the install process looks at your hardware setup and sorts out the IRQs then. So I re-installed Windows with all my hardware plugged in and this time everything worked in Windows with no clashing IRQs. Obviously that was a desperate measure but it worked.
 
Some bios's will tell you what pci/agp/pci-e slots share what IRQ's if its not in the bios the manual may tell you. And its all ways good If possible to keep things one pci slot apart. (its an old pc thing cannot remember why)
 
Microsoft with any kind of luck will remove all reference to IRQ's with their next OS.
They will make it impossible for such a list of IRQ's to be displayed.

Just forget about IRQ's - you don't need to worry about them.
A long time ago, when some of us made a living supporting OS's that really needed a lot of support (at a desktop level) IRQ's and clashing were important.
Windows 95 got rid of 95% of IRQ issues and successfully.
Since Windows 2000 and the ideal of virtual IRQ's the end user really hasn't had to worry about such things.

Just let Windows worry about IRQ's - you don't need to worry.
 
every now and then my Vista PC just decides it's going to shut down, and when it does - things like this turn up in the event viewer:

IRQARB: ACPI BIOS does not contain an IRQ for the device in PCI slot 14, function 0. Please contact your system vendor for technical assistance.

IRQARB: ACPI BIOS does not contain an IRQ for the device in PCI slot 11, function 0. Please contact your system vendor for technical assistance.

IRQARB: ACPI BIOS does not contain an IRQ for the device in PCI slot 12, function 0. Please contact your system vendor for technical assistance.


is this an IRQ problem and can anything be done about it? i know nothing about IRQs.
 
stoofa said:
Microsoft with any kind of luck will remove all reference to IRQ's with their next OS.
They will make it impossible for such a list of IRQ's to be displayed.

Just forget about IRQ's - you don't need to worry about them.
A long time ago, when some of us made a living supporting OS's that really needed a lot of support (at a desktop level) IRQ's and clashing were important.
Windows 95 got rid of 95% of IRQ issues and successfully.
Since Windows 2000 and the ideal of virtual IRQ's the end user really hasn't had to worry about such things.

Just let Windows worry about IRQ's - you don't need to worry.
Click to expand...
That's nice to know, thank you.

As least it's one less complicated OS feature I don't need to learn
 
as said already, irq shairing is not so much an issue now days.

Along time back you had to manually assign irq's and dma addresses.

Now with plug and play, i will call it that now as it works, you no longer need to worry so much about it. How ever moving the sound card to another slot could resolve your issue.

Plug n play or "plug n pray" as i used to call it used to hit n miss lol
 
Plug and prey sounds about right!

Do you need to uninstall and reinstall the drivers when changing PCI slots? This question applies for any PCI device, not just sound cards.
It would be massively easier if I can just change without messing around with OEM X-fi drivers
 
Hen_Dawg said:
Plug and prey sounds about right!

Do you need to uninstall and reinstall the drivers when changing PCI slots? This question applies for any PCI device, not just sound cards.
It would be massively easier if I can just change without messing around with OEM X-fi drivers
Click to expand...


you shouldnt need to un-install and re-install mate, just power off and move it around.
 
Phew!
Cos it took enough time trying to get it to work before. And double that if the switch actually made it worse and I had to change it back.

MarcLister said:
Plug and prey OR plug and pray? ;)
Click to expand...
lol, prAy
 
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