Printable View
hello i was trying to put a new Ethernet card into a really old machine (AMD K-6 w/ 32megs). when i put it in for the first time into PCI and booted up, right after the IBM logo (it's Aptiva) it said something about IRQ conflict but never in any following boot ups afterwards. suffice to say the card isn't working. my question is how can i find out if there's really an IRQ conflict in win ME since the BIOS isn't giving me any warnings anymore ...
You can go into the device manager to find out where the conflict is. Right click my computer and goto properties, then click on the device manager tab. In the window it will show you all the devices currently installed on the system. If one is conflicting you should see a small exclamation or question mark next to the devices icon. Click on it and through that you can set the IRQ's. If the card itself is very old you may have to set the IRQ settings on the card itself via dip switches. If that doesn't do it be sure your BIOS is setup to recieve plug and play devices correctly. Usually it is set as the Plug and Play bios.
Hope that helps.
Just to add a little to this.Just because it doesn't happen every time you boot up doesn't mean there's not a conflict.Both of the devices have to be in use in order for them to conflict with each other(ie. if you're sending a file to someone on your network and try to listen to a song on winamp,and you have your sound card and NIC both configured for IRQ 5 then you will get a conflict).
Something that I've noticed is that both the Videocards and Eternet cards like to use IRQ 15 (or is it 11) as their address.
Either you can go with the above suggestion,
or try to uninstall the videocard, turn off the computer, put in the ethernet card and install both cards and hope it results the conflict,
or (the painful suggestion) format your puter, remove all cards except the video, install ME, then the vide drivers, then enter the network card, then install it's drivers, then follow that for each card until done. (It's a last solution for IRQ conflicts)
Havaing had this problem a few times before, I may be able to help...
Some network cards cannot have thier settings detected by windows. Since the NIC is one of the first things windows loads, if it cannot detect the hardware settings it will assume that it is a software-configured card and set them itself. Then later it assigns an IRQ that is specifically set somewhere else in the device manager list to the same as your network card's. This creates a conflict. For over a month once I was forced to shut down one card every time I wanted to print something because of this. So be sure to check the jumper settings on the card, if it has any.
Also, check the BIOS. Some versions allow IRQs to be set to a specific PCI slot, or even to reserve IRQs not to be used by PCI devices. You may need to reconfigure that. Some BIOS versions also allow a user to set an IRQ to a network card. If this setting is not the same as the jumper settings on the NICm windows will go all wacky and try to assign the card an unused IRQ, which may conflict with other windows or BIOS settings.
So in short, check the device manager first to ensure that no software settings are overlapped, then check the jumper settings on the card to ensure they match with window's, and finally check the BIOS settings for any conflicts there.
Hope this helps...