PC is crashing...what to do?

[epricedright]

It looks like you are using a USB printer, if it is not disabled, disable the parallel printer port in the BIOS, IRQ7 might be freed to be used. The reason you got worse performance when you swapped the network card is because it was on IRQ11 with the modem and USB port. What components do you have that are USB? How many slots do you have in total. It looks like 4 plus AGP (modem, network, creative, open, and an AGP slot).

What video card did you have? make and model?

I think the network card is the problem, I would swap the Creative LIVE and the network card and see what happens.

Yes, I currently have 2 printers plugged into the 4 port USB hub. The other 2 ports in that hub are free. There are 2 USB ports in the back. In one plug I have the USB hub connected, in the other is the OEM keyboard. Those are the only USB components plugged into the pc. I have 4 USB ports on the machine (2 in front-not used, and 2 in back).

I have 5 PCI slots, and 1 AGP for the video. There is one slot on the case that is blank-no corresponding PCI slot. So that would be 7 slots total. From the top, here is how they are in place currently:

1. Blank

2. AGP - EVGA Nvidia GeForce 6200 256MB AGP 8X DDR Video card

3. PCI - Open

4. PCI - SoundBlaster Live

5. PCI - Network Ethernet

6. PCI - Modem

7. PCI - IEEE 1394

Prior to last night, the Network Card was in slot #3 above.

My previous video card was a 64MB Nvidia GeForce2 MX Graphics card with TV-out.

Maybe this AGP8X card is not compatible with this pc. My AGP slot is 4X. I questioned this before purchasing it and called EVGA and they said it will work, but I will only be able to use 4X speed, not 8X. So they confirmed it was backwards compatible. The box says minimum reguirements are AGP 2.0 or higher compliant motherboard. But I'm thinking the card is either not compatible or defective.

[The Fred]

It looks like you are using a USB printer, if it is not disabled, disable the parallel printer port in the BIOS, IRQ7 might be freed to be used. The reason you got worse performance when you swapped the network card is because it was on IRQ11 with the modem and USB port. What components do you have that are USB? How many slots do you have in total. It looks like 4 plus AGP (modem, network, creative, open, and an AGP slot).

What video card did you have? make and model?

I think the network card is the problem, I would swap the Creative LIVE and the network card and see what happens.

Yes, I currently have 2 printers plugged into the 4 port USB hub. The other 2 ports in that hub are free. There are 2 USB ports in the back. In one plug I have the USB hub connected, in the other is the OEM keyboard. Those are the only USB components plugged into the pc. I have 4 USB ports on the machine (2 in front-not used, and 2 in back).

I have 5 PCI slots, and 1 AGP for the video. There is one slot on the case that is blank-no corresponding PCI slot. So that would be 7 slots total. From the top, here is how they are in place currently:

1. Blank

2. AGP - EVGA Nvidia GeForce 6200 256MB AGP 8X DDR Video card

3. PCI - Open

4. PCI - SoundBlaster Live

5. PCI - Network Ethernet

6. PCI - Modem

7. PCI - IEEE 1394

Prior to last night, the Network Card was in slot #3 above.

My previous video card was a 64MB Nvidia GeForce2 MX Graphics card with TV-out.

Maybe this AGP8X card is not compatible with this pc. My AGP slot is 4X. I questioned this before purchasing it and called EVGA and they said it will work, but I will only be able to use 4X speed, not 8X. So they confirmed it was backwards compatible. The box says minimum reguirements are AGP 2.0 or higher compliant motherboard. But I'm thinking the card is either not compatible or defective.

I sure do wish I could have a look at your bios settings.. too

[epricedright]

Expand the +System Devices and give me a screenshot of that please

It's on it's way.

[The Fred]

[epricedright]

Ok, I haven't done anymore card/slot swapping. Mike, should I just switch the network card with the sound card 1st or pull all the cards besides the video card?

[BodybyFisher]

I think the first test should be, pull all cards and run with JUST a video card and see how video is. This will tell us whether this is a hardware or software issue. If the vid is perfect, we know you have a conflict, if the vid STILL has problems we know the problem is NOT related to a conflict. Pull all cards except vid, start computer, then test video.

Obviously you will need to turn it off and put the network card in to connect again. Put the network card where the Creative Live is when you to, and then test video again and report what IRQ its on when you do

[epricedright]

I need someone to please help me uninstall the Floppy Drive and the Smart Card Reader (Visa Usb reader) from my BIOS please. Please PM me for my phone number. I'll explain later in detail what I did, but I KNOW this is the problem. Thanks!!!

[epricedright]

Here is how it was before I started:

1. Blank

2. AGP - EVGA Nvidia GeForce 6200 256MB AGP 8X DDR Video card

3. PCI - Open

4. PCI - SoundBlaster Live

5. PCI - Network Ethernet

6. PCI - Modem

7. PCI - IEEE 1394

Prior to last night, the Network Card was in slot #3 above.

I uninstalled all the PCI cards besides the video card. I then reinstalled each card one at a time checking both the vids in the Media Player and DVD's through the DVD player,checking the IRQ's and capturing screenshots between each card installed.

Video card by itself, the vids were good, IRQ was 3.

Put the network card in the slot where the sound card was before (4), good vids, IRQ was 3 for both. Rebooted, network went to IRQ11. Vids still good. Rebooted again, IRQ still 11 and vids still good.

Turned off, plugged in USB hub (2 Printers), booted, vids still good.

Put sound card in slot 5, booted, popup said devices installed, must restart, restarted, IRQ was 5, the other IRQ's were the same as before (vid was at 3, network was at 11), vids still good.

Put in Modem card in slot 7, IRQ was 3, vids good.

Noticed a Smart Card Reader (Visa Usb in the OEM keyboard) and Floppy in the Device Mgr. (DM) Uninstalled there, vids were good.

Put IEEE 1394 in slot 6, IRQ not showing because it was disabled in DM. Somehow lost the mouse, plugged in corded mouse,still no mouse, had to hard reboot. It did the Check Disk. Once started, Vids were bad, Network moved from IRQ 11 back to IRQ 3. Rebooted, safely remove hardware came up again, asked if I wanted to remove the Visa Reader and officejet printer. The vids were bad. Shut down, took out 1394 card, slot 6 is now open. The network card went back to 11, but the vids were still bad. The Visa reader was in DM, uninstalled there and Uninstalled the Floppy, not just disabled, but uninstalled from the DM screen. Vids were now good.

Left out the IEEE 1394 card for good. Plugging in the 1394 makes the network card jump from IRQ11 to IRQ3 and get bad vids.

Rebooted, Floppy showed back up in DM, vids bad, The IRQ's were the same (vid IRQ was 3, network was 11, sound was 5, modem was 3).

Uninstalled floppy from DM, vids still bad, saw the card reader AGAIN in DM, uninstalled the VISA reader, vids are good. Restarted, reader and floppy pop back up in DM, vids bad, (vid IRQ was 3, network was 11, sound was 5, modem was 3), uninstall the reader and floppy and the vids are good. You can see the Smart Reader in the Device Manager screenshots in post #194 and #204.

Conclusion: Need to uninstall the Smart Card Reader and Floppy Drive from the BIOS. Those in there cause hardware conflict and make the video stutter. Need to also leave out the IEEE 1394 card as that installed causes the network card to jump from IRQ11 to IRQ3, which also causes the video stutter. I believe that should fix it.

If someone could help walk me through that process in BIOS, I would really appreciate it. I've never been in BIOS, so it scares me a little...don't want to screw it up NOW. Please PM me and I will give you my phone number. Thanks!!!

[BodybyFisher]

Here is the page on Compaq/HP's web page that goes through your BIOS page by page. It explains how to get in and honestly its pretty self explanatory. Just watch what you change. I don't see that you have the ability to disable the floppy controller.

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/documen...p;product=94397

[epricedright]

Here is the page on Compaq/HP's web page that goes through your BIOS page by page. It explains how to get in and honestly its pretty self explanatory. Just watch what you change. I don't see that you have the ability to disable the floppy controller.

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/documen...p;product=94397

I have read that and printed it out actually. It doesn't say specifically how to disable or uninstall anything though.

It would seem I should be able to keep the floppy and smart card reader from reappearing in the Device Manager when I reboot, no? Uninstalling those in the DM does no good as they keep reappearing.

I wonder if another keyboard would keep the Smart card reader from appearing in the DM? And maybe replacing the Floppy Drive? I have an old Gateway win 95 rig I could rob for the Floppy & keyboard. Would that Floppy Drive be compatible you think? They're all the same, right?

[MAC]

See if your bios has a "Security" menu. See if you can disable SmartCard.

Also, do you have a "SystemLock" in your bios? Doesn't a SmartCard work in conjunction with SystemLock function in the bios. If you have a bios "Security" menu it may contain an option to disable SystemLock.

I'm not an expert--Just trying to point you in the right direction to disable SmartCard, which I believe is what you want to do.

[BodybyFisher]

If you can't disable them, have you considered reinstalling the drivers? When did the floppy controller stop working do you know?

When you upgraded from ME to XP did you do an upgrade or full install.

[epricedright]

OK, got 'er fixed...finally! Turns out it was the Compaq keyboard with that Card Reader, who would of thunk? That keyboard came with the pc too...the bums! I hate Compaq! I figured out if I disabled the reader and not uninstall it, then it wouldn't come back in the Device Manager as enabled after rebooting. But for some reason it was affecting my startup items in the task bar. So I decided to pitch the Compaq keyboard all together. With the Gateway keyboard, the Smart Reader doesn't show up in the Device Manager at all. Plus, when using the Gateway keyboard, all my startup items appear, although on the last reboot one didn't show.

The Floppy being disabled and not uninstalled seems to keep that from affecting anything. After MANY reboots, just to be certain, my videos are now smooth as a babie's butt!

I'm pretty certain the IEEE 1394 card was causing a problem as well making the network card jump on the same IRQ as the video card, bogging down the resources. I could probably get it to work in another slot, but why? I never used it anyhow. Now I need to find a cover plate for that open slot where the IEEE 1394 card was. Maybe the old Gateway has one that will fit.

I want to THANK everyone for helping, with a big shout out to Mike and Fred for hanging in there with me till the end. I can't put in words how much I appreciate what you guys did for me. I've learned SO much! Thanks guys!! But I also want to give a big THANKS to Marika, Regis, JimHare, Texas Jim and everyone else for helping as well. Hopefully one day I can return a favor to you all!

p.s. Thanks Bruce for allowing me to post here and providing us all with this great board!

[The Fred]

Thanks but I didn't hang in till the end.. my old 929 fell asleep

I feel your pain about Compaq,

Those are horrible or they use to be.. HP also was back then.

Gateways were pretty good if you ordered 'em right,

I remember being so pleased with my $3500 PII 450 monster

It had a HUGE 256 megs of memory

I can't believe, that, back then I had the balls to throw that $3500 PC at a wall.... wow. heh. Gateway replaced the board and the hard drive for me,

And they replaced my keyboard and mouse so many times..

It was amazing.

[The Fred]

Speaking of video problems,

I really upset my computer just now.. and the video went crazy

I guess you should not open 18,000 lines of data in your browser.. ever.

[epricedright]

If you can't disable them, have you considered reinstalling the drivers? When did the floppy controller stop working do you know?

When you upgraded from ME to XP did you do an upgrade or full install.

The Floppy flopped out of service this time last year. I hardly used the Floppy, so I wasn't too concerned about it. I tried updating the drivers in DM, but it wouldn't let me. I never tried reinstalling them though. Like I said before, the desktop didn't see much action after the video card went out and I picked up the lap tops. Used mostly as a printer hub, and all my data was networked out of it. But with the working video and these dual monitors, I can see myself on the desktop more now.

When I upgraded to XP, I used an upgrade CD, if I recall correctly. But it was right after I did a full and complete restore in ME. Boy that ME was a nightmare!

[epricedright]

Thanks but I didn't hang in till the end.. my old 929 fell asleep

I feel your pain about Compaq,

Those are horrible or they use to be.. HP also was back then.

Gateways were pretty good if you ordered 'em right,

I remember being so pleased with my $3500 PII 450 monster

It had a HUGE 256 megs of memory

I can't believe, that, back then I had the balls to throw that $3500 PC at a wall.... wow. heh. Gateway replaced the board and the hard drive for me,

And they replaced my keyboard and mouse so many times..

It was amazing.

Yeah, when I first purchased this Compaq and for 6 mos to a year afterwards, it was hell. It had win ME and what a piece of crap that was. I was getting Kernel32.dll errors out the Wazoo! It fried a hard drive one time and I had to do countless complete restores to keep it running. I bet I did 4 complete Restores in that period of time. I was pissed! I was fairly new to pc's then, so that made it even more frustrating. And their tech support was terrible. I could never understand them. Didn't take long before I figured out they were all from India. I paid around $2500 back in 2001 for everything, but that included a 20" CRT, a Klipsch 4 speaker plus sub sound system and some software. I think the mointor was $300+ and the Klipsch was another $300.

My laptops are HP's, and even though I haven't had any problems out of them to speak of, I will never buy another Compaq/HP product. I couldn't turn these laptops down though as we picked them up this time last year on Black Friday and got them for a song.

The Gateway I had was decent, but I never upgraded the Win 95 to 98, so it became obsolete fast software wise. I paid $3200 for it back in '94 I believe...unbelievable! I never had any problems out of it though. Their tech support was great and they actually spoke perfect english...imagine that! It still works as a matter of fact, but with 95 in there, I can hardly run anything in it. My haven't the times and technology changed since then?

[The Fred]

Thanks but I didn't hang in till the end.. my old 929 fell asleep

I feel your pain about Compaq,

Those are horrible or they use to be.. HP also was back then.

Gateways were pretty good if you ordered 'em right,

I remember being so pleased with my $3500 PII 450 monster

It had a HUGE 256 megs of memory

I can't believe, that, back then I had the balls to throw that $3500 PC at a wall.... wow. heh. Gateway replaced the board and the hard drive for me,

And they replaced my keyboard and mouse so many times..

It was amazing.

Yeah, when I first purchased this Compaq and for 6 mos to a year afterwards, it was hell. It had win ME and what a piece of crap that was. I was getting Kernel32.dll errors out the Wazoo! It fried a hard drive one time and I had to do countless complete restores to keep it running. I bet I did 4 complete Restores in that period of time. I was pissed! I was fairly new to pc's then, so that made it even more frustrating. And their tech support was terrible. I could never understand them. Didn't take long before I figured out they were all from India. I paid around $2500 back in 2001 for everything, but that included a 20" CRT, a Klipsch 4 speaker plus sub sound system and some software. I think the mointor was $300+ and the Klipsch was another $300.

My laptops are HP's, and even though I haven't had any problems out of them to speak of, I will never buy another Compaq/HP product. I couldn't turn these laptops down though as we picked them up this time last year on Black Friday and got them for a song.

The Gateway I had was decent, but I never upgraded the Win 95 to 98, so it became obsolete fast software wise. I paid $3200 for it back in '94 I believe...unbelievable! I never had any problems out of it though. Their tech support was great and they actually spoke perfect english...imagine that! It still works as a matter of fact, but with 95 in there, I can hardly run anything in it. My haven't the times and technology changed since then?

Gateway was good about that, English speakers with brains..

Something broke, they'd say, we'll send a return label or just throw it out

(usually just had me throw out a keyboard or mouse of course)

You sure are right about Windows ME- when I tell some folks I run 2000 they think it is the same as ME I tell them no it is NTish and they say ohhhhh I see

"Well 2000 isn't good for games"

"I don't care"

[epricedright]

I'm just now realizing I'm going to need those IEEE 1394 Firewire ports! I just found my Pinnacle Studio Moviebox DV setup that I bought new a couple years ago and never used. It connects via Firewire. Can you believe that? Right after I decided I didn't need Firewire. I'm hoping to put our old home movies on DVD with that.

So I need to try and see if putting the IEEE 1394 card on another slot will work, and not cause my network card to jump back on IRQ3. I have a feeling it won't though. But maybe with that keyboard out of the picture, everything will be fine, even if it does?

Man, I hate trying to fix something that aint broke!

[The Fred]

While we're on computers,

Does anyone know how to make notepad use both sides of the cpu?

I have two cores and I notice when I am editing with notepad it will only use one side of the cpu

(Happened(s) with my old P4 3.0E HT and my current PD 3.0 dual core)

At least with the HT I could disable HT and it would use the whole cpu, notepad would.

I'm just now realizing I'm going to need those IEEE 1394 Firewire ports! I just found my Pinnacle Studio Moviebox DV setup that I bought new a couple years ago and never used. It connects via Firewire. Can you believe that? Right after I decided I didn't need Firewire. I'm hoping to put our old home movies on DVD with that.

So I need to try and see if putting the IEEE 1394 card on another slot will work, and not cause my network card to jump back on IRQ3. I have a feeling it won't though.

You can sell it on ebay and buy a convertor box,

I think plextor makes a good one..

Actually I made a thread about those on video help brb I will post it

(The jist of what they told me was that the best solution is an mpeg2 HARDWARE BASED encoder)

Here it is http://forum.videohelp.com/viewtopic.php?p...ht=fred#1607675

[BodybyFisher]

OK, got 'er fixed...finally! Turns out it was the Compaq keyboard with that Card Reader, who would of thunk? That keyboard came with the pc too...the bums! I hate Compaq! I figured out if I disabled the reader and not uninstall it, then it wouldn't come back in the Device Manager as enabled after rebooting. But for some reason it was affecting my startup items in the task bar. So I decided to pitch the Compaq keyboard all together. With the Gateway keyboard, the Smart Reader doesn't show up in the Device Manager at all. Plus, when using the Gateway keyboard, all my startup items appear, although on the last reboot one didn't show.

The Floppy being disabled and not uninstalled seems to keep that from affecting anything. After MANY reboots, just to be certain, my videos are now smooth as a babie's butt!

I'm pretty certain the IEEE 1394 card was causing a problem as well making the network card jump on the same IRQ as the video card, bogging down the resources. I could probably get it to work in another slot, but why? I never used it anyhow. Now I need to find a cover plate for that open slot where the IEEE 1394 card was. Maybe the old Gateway has one that will fit.

I want to THANK everyone for helping, with a big shout out to Mike and Fred for hanging in there with me till the end. I can't put in words how much I appreciate what you guys did for me. I've learned SO much! Thanks guys!! But I also want to give a big THANKS to Marika, Regis, JimHare, Texas Jim and everyone else for helping as well. Hopefully one day I can return a favor to you all!

p.s. Thanks Bruce for allowing me to post here and providing us all with this great board!

You may find that installing the IEEE1394 card now everyting will be ok now Mon. You will probably push your network card back to IRQ3, but I was talking to Regis, and he has 11 devices on IRQ11 OMG! Try it, you have nothing to lose! Mike Glad you got er done! Whew! Really glad!

Glad you saw the side benefit of all the learning you experienced! You are ready to build your own next time.

[epricedright]

Ok, I installed the 1394 in slot 3 at first and there were 4 items on IRQ3 - video, modem, network and the 1394. The Vids were still good though!

So I moved the 1394 to slot 6 and now the 1394 is at IRQ11 and IRQ3 shares the video, modem, and the network. And yea Mon, all the vids were good, so we be jammin!

Ironically, all 5 of my startup items appeared in the taskbar after reinstalling the 1394. Rebooted, there were only 3? I wonder if maybe the startups are affected by the missing BOOT.INI file? The weird thing now is, in msconfig I have a BOOT.INI tab there. Before I didn't. But I still get that invalid BOOT.INI message at startup. It doesn't seem to be affecting anything else though, so I'm leaving it be.

Final configuration:

1. Blank

2. Video -IRQ3

3. Open

4. Network - IRQ3

5. Sound -IRQ5

6. IEEE 1394 - IRQ11

7. Modem - IRQ3

Looks like Regis was right Mike. The IRQ assignments don't appear to affect the video. Maybe we all learned something here? I know I learned a "boat load'!

Mike. I bet you are glad we finally got 'er done! I appreciate all the time you've put forth helping me with this...I REALLY DO!

p.s. Tell Twinkie I said hey and Thanks!

[BodybyFisher]

Not true, occasionally putting two high bandwidth devices on the same IRQ creates serious problems and problems like you were experiencing. As you know the network card is constantly doing its thing, so its requiring the IRQs attention which hampers a device like your video card. Regis is appalled about having that many devices on IRQ11 and can not understand how they play nice together. I have had to pull my REALmagic® Xcard home theater multimedia card as it conflicted with my systems IRQs..and put it on the shelf.

We WERE barking up the right tree. Confusing your problem was that your VIDS were fine before the video card change, so we were heading in the right direction, you just had a weird problem that was difficult to diagnose... Glad all is good now, Mike

[epricedright]

I agree Mike. My problem was WEIRD. I had no idea the keyboard could affect my video. I forgot all about that Card Reader in there. I guess they would call that a "hardware conflict"?

I think the reason the video was fine before the card change was due to the fact that I never unplugged the keyboard, not lately anyhow. Unplugging and reconnecting it seemed to cause it to rear it's ugly head. Now why it never gave problems before when it was unplugged in the past is a mystery to me. I remember in the past I would get an icon in the taskbar asking if I wanted to "safely remove the Hardware" (card reader), and would do so, but it never reappeared or gave trouble like it did on this go around.

I don't doubt we were on the right track, and I believe you when you say an IRQ can be choked with too many high bandwidth devices...makes sense. Being it does happen on some systems and has happened to you, I understand why you deducted that could have been my problem as well.

Thanks Again!

[Regis]

Fisher didn't mention to you that I have 3 vid cards and 2 usb hubs for starters. That'll eat up 15 IRQs in a hurry. And by the way, I'm probably one of the few people that really liked Win ME. ME had monster drivers and was very stable once all the updates were in place and the proper drivers used. Loved it for gaming (at the time). Too bad it couldn't tell the difference between 64mb of ram and 512 (just like it predecessors) and utilize the extra ram better.

I'm glad you got things straightened out. Now let's talk about high speed connections. This old rig just sent a 16mb file to Florida from NY at 8.9mbps and received at 1.72mbps..... yeeeehawwww! lol