Sound Card IRQ troubles

[Celt0r]

It's an on-board soundblaster 128.
It's IRQ11, same as my AGP MX 200.
THe volume button is grayed out, as are the devices button in control panel.
It also says there are no conflicts, and windows detects it when i remove it.
Any idea wtf is wrong? :/

 

[Celt0r]

Oh, i looked inside at the chip and it says this:
ES 1373
1373-0001-04

 

[Jakespeare]

Hi CeltOr,
I really don't have enough info to go on, as far as
a hardware diagnosis, however.............

If all is well in SYSTEM / DEVICE MANAGER / and there
are no exclamation points on the sound, then you may have
a software issue: All the drivers are not loading.

*(BTW: This is something that I do on EVERY computer I build: I stop the useless / out of date COMM ports, aka SERIAL ports, from loading in hardware. You know, those 2 little 9-pin serial ports on your computer ? OLD mouse hookup ? The take IRQ's, usually 3 & 4. If you know how to enter the BIOS - and are not using them, DISABLE THEM.)

When you reboot, Windows will reorganize the IRQ's and you may find that your Sound has moved (SB's like IRQ 5).

*** ALSO: Try switching around your PCI devices. To do this,
you must have the drivers still, it helps. In device manager, REMOVE the (MOden, or NIC, etc) and turn off computer.
>UNPLUG power.
>REMOVE device.
>REBOOT.
>TURN OFF computer, re-install device in diff slot.
IRQ's may shift and change to what you need.

*** LAST, and very important. Get DirectX 8.0a or 8.1.
> INSTALL.
> GET NEW drivers for you SB onboard.
* NOTE: The 1373 is the ENSONIQ / SOUNDBLASTER

http://www.ensoniq.com

or......... SB website........ Get the entire driver package.

I hope this helps.

Jakespeare

 

[Guest_imported]

All good advice ..... bear in mind that many sound cards will not function properly if they are sharing an IRQ qith other "physical" hardware. You should be able to sort this out by juggling the cards into other PCI slots as the guy above says. Start with the sound card and then add the others using Device Manager each time to see which IRQ is being assigned.

Hope this helps

CatFunt

 

[ceh4702]

How does he move the sound card if it is integrated in the motherboard?

You could disable the soundcard and buy a soundblaster live card.

You cant really move the video card if it is AGP, but often you have to install some video to install the sound drivers for the motherboard, or the computer will not work. If you remove the drivers and reinstall it, windows would see the sound card and maybe install the video card differently. Usually it is windows that does this. sometimes if you install extra sound card mixers you can get better drivers. There may be something like that on the setup disk that you got with the computer. I am thinking sound is SSI and you could have a Yamaha version for the mixer. If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.

 

[CitrixEngineer]

Most modern PCI Bus Mastering systems allow IRQs to be shared - what is your motherboard? Maybe there's an IRQ sharing feature that can be turned on in the BIOS.

There's usually also a feature that allows you to specify an IRQ for the video card.

SB audio cards do just fine using IRQ 5 or 7, rather than 11 - which is often taken by the graphics.

If neither of the above work, I think the answer still lies in the BIOS. Look for an entry that says something like Plug and Play OS installed, and disable it. There should also be an option for force ESCD update. This only happens once, so set it to enabled, reboot, and your PCI susbsytem should rejuggle the IRQs your hardware is using.

If Windows still reports a problem after this, go into Device Manager, remove the sound card and reboot. Windows will rediscover the card at the newly re-juggled position, and the installation should work.

If you still have issues, I (or any of the hardware gurus on this site) can describe how to safely manually re-assign system resources for your sound card, as a last resort.

I hope this helps