Author Topic: Win 2000 IRQ Sharing Nightmare (Read 481 times)

funkedup · « **on:** February 27, 2002, 05:15:38 PM »

Win 2000 decided to put just about every one of my devices (GF3, SB Live, NIC, USB, TV Tuner, ad nauseam) on IRQ 11.

There are plenty of free IRQs and I would like to give each device it's own IRQ.

I knew how to do this in Win9X but in Win2000 all the dialogs in control panel are greyed out. Any advice on how to this?

Am I right that having them all on one IRQ is a bad thing?

Mobo is Epox EP8K7A (AMD761)
Athlon 1333

-ammo- · « **Reply #1 on:** February 27, 2002, 05:22:28 PM »

Funked, let it ride. Unlike in Win98 where manually assigning PCI devices to different IRQ's was a solution, this is not the case W/ Win2K. The only way to do it involves a complete install of win2K and it will give you some stability problems. The stability is the best aspect of Win2K! Sancho tried both ways and came to a conclusion based on his results that letting win2K assign all of your devices to IRQ 11 was the best way.

BTW, has this created a problem that you can see? Or you were just shocked (as I was when I first saw it) that everything was on IRQ11?

Gunthr · « **Reply #2 on:** February 27, 2002, 05:27:55 PM »

Hey Funked,

Don't worry about the IRQ assignments in Win2k.... at least for now. It is totally normal for Win2k to assign the IRQs like that. It probably isn't the cause of your other problem with the CD burner.

funkedup · « **Reply #3 on:** February 27, 2002, 05:34:54 PM »

Thanks for the info. The IRQ sharing doesn't seem to be causing any problems. I just don't like the principle of it. I am an old DOS user. I remember setting jumpers to get everything on its own IRQ. IRQ sharing just seems wrong to me, like dogs and cats living together!

mrsid2 · « **Reply #4 on:** February 27, 2002, 05:50:11 PM »

IRQ sharing can cause severe problems with certain hardware like SB Live! when combined with the 686B chipset at least.

The way to get normal IRQ behaviour is a reinstall.

Some report success by just changing the acpi role in the manager, but at least for me that didn't work.

Win2k installs without ACPI (the thing that forces your irqs to same slot) by pressing F5 at the time SETUP asks you to press F6 to install additional scsi blah blah etc.

Setup continues untill you get a screen where you can choose to install 'standard pc' instead of ACPI one. Once setup is completed you have your IRQ's nicely spread out just like old times.

funkedup · « **Reply #5 on:** February 27, 2002, 06:17:24 PM »

If I try reinstalling Win2k, do I need to reformat, or will it install over the current installation?

mrsid2 · « **Reply #6 on:** February 27, 2002, 06:24:10 PM »

It will install over the previous installation, but beware as it probably clears up your registers..

That may cause problems with certain programs, especially MS programs since they rely on registers. Losing registry info means practically a reinstall on those.

Backup your system state before you do the reinstall. If you're not sure about the whole thing and you have no problems with system stability or performance, forget the whole reinstall

OTOH if you can backup your whole system status, you can restore the situation fairly easy. It's your call. Just don't do anything wild like choose to format the whole HD or remove any primary partitions during the setup

Eagler · « **Reply #7 on:** February 27, 2002, 06:42:01 PM »

You can force the irqs by turning off the ACPI but you need to have the drivers of your devices ready as it'll want to reload most of them. It is good to know your motherboard and its irq assignment table as you'll have to manually assign them. It works for XP also.
Here are the steps:

Right Click on My Computer
Choose Properties
Click the Hardware tab
Choose Device Manager
Double click on Computer. You will see Advanced Configuration And Power
Interface (ACPI) PC
Double Click on the ACPI reference
Click the Driver tab
Click Update Driver
Click Next
Choose 'Display a list of the known drivers for this device so that I can
choose a specific driver'
Click Next
Choose 'Show all hardware of this device class'
Select Standard PC
Click Next. Windows will display a warning message. Ignore it and click Yes
Click Next. Windows will upgrade the driver. This takes a few seconds
Click Finish
Close the 'Upgrade Device Driver Wizard' window. You will be prompted to Restart your computer.
After restart, return to the Device Manager and verify that your computer's configuration is now Standard PC and not ACPI

========================================

it worked like a champ on the XP side of my dual boot XP/98 config
Was able to get firewire card and everything else their own own irq for my digital video experimenting

gl

mrsid2 · « **Reply #8 on:** February 28, 2002, 05:08:17 AM »

As I said, that doesn't always work. I tried that and it caused major instability problems for me.

Reinstall is a safer, but of course a bit more complicated way.

Seeker · « **Reply #9 on:** February 28, 2002, 07:13:01 AM »

It should be a non-issue, Funked.

In DOS based systems, the hardware has (and on occasion needs) direct access to memory areas to operate.

In NT based systems, this direct access is denied by the hardware abstraction layer. Hardware must access memory through with code layer and may not directly impact upon kernel processes or executive services.

Unless you have very definate, concrete needs (and the knowledge to set it up); leave it alone.

SOB · « **Reply #10 on:** February 28, 2002, 01:58:15 PM »

It's up to you, but I wouldn't (and don't, mine are on IRQ 9) mess with it. Here's an article from Mircrosoft's Knowledge Base.

General Description of IRQ Sharing in Windows

SOB

funkedup · « **Reply #11 on:** February 28, 2002, 02:01:42 PM »

Thanks guys. Everything seems to work OK, so I'm not going to mess with it for now.