setting PCI slot interrupt?

[Paul J]

I'm having problems with my iPod synching (and who isn't?) and thought I
would try a dedicated interrupt for my Firewire card. My BIOS allows me to
specify an interrupt for a PCI slot. I took a look through my interupts and
nobody was using 11, so I set the interrupt to 11 in my BIOS for the slot
the Firewire card is in. Yet when I run XP the interrupts are as they were
and 11 is not being used. When I go back to the BIOS it still thinks it
should be set to 11. Any ideas?

paul

 

[*Vanguard*]

"Paul J" said in news:eQ2ic.30928$Rz3.5285@fed1read05:

I'm having problems with my iPod synching (and who isn't?) and
thought I would try a dedicated interrupt for my Firewire card. My
BIOS allows me to specify an interrupt for a PCI slot. I took a look
through my interupts and nobody was using 11, so I set the interrupt
to 11 in my BIOS for the slot the Firewire card is in. Yet when I
run XP the interrupts are as they were and 11 is not being used.
When I go back to the BIOS it still thinks it should be set to 11.
Any ideas?

paul

Because you also configured the BIOS to let a PnP (Plug and Play)
compliant OS usurp the IRQ assignments; i.e., the OS will manage the
IRQs, not the BIOS. Somewhere in your BIOS is a setting "PnP operating
system?", or some such setting. That means the OS is allowed to use
whatever it wants for IRQ assignment. However, if you disable this
option, Windows might end up not being able to manage all the devices
trying to share the same resource(s). After all, YOU chose to perform
the management.

 

[Paul J]

Thanks. Is there a way I can tell XP to use a specific interrupt? When I
go into resources the ability to change anything is ghosted. (I do have
admin priveleges.)

paul

 

[*Vanguard*]

"Paul J" said in news:SM9ic.32493$Rz3.2040@fed1read05:

Thanks. Is there a way I can tell XP to use a specific interrupt?
When I go into resources the ability to change anything is ghosted.
(I do have admin priveleges.)

paul

If you had the ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power management
Interface) setting enabled in the BIOS when you install Windows, it will
install the ACPI-compliant HAL (hardware abstraction layer). So Windows
will auto-magically handle resource allocation and you don't get any ove
rrides. You can revert to the standard HAL but sometimes that causes
nasty problems. I did it once where I changed in in the BIOS (to
disable ACPI) and Windows wouldn't boot until I reenabled ACPI in the
BIOS. I hear some folks claiming that they simply went into Device
Manager to select a different HAL under the Computer node in the tree
list of devices. However, since the file(s) for the standard HAL didn't
get installed if ACPI was detected during the install, I can't see how
this lets you revert from an ACPI-compliant HAL to a standard HAL. I
later found out that you have to change the BIOS setting to disable ACPI
and then boot using the Windows install CD to run Repair to have it
detect ACPI is not enabled and to make it install the standard HAL.
With the standard HAL, PnP isn't used so you will have to manually
configure the resources to avoid or resolve conflicts. A search at
http://support.microsoft.com/ on "ACPI HAL" (all words) for Windows XP
turns up about a dozen articles and one of them probably takes you
through the steps to change to a different HAL.