[McTimson]

My brother's computer is having problems with every sound card I install. I've tried a Sound Blaster Live! 5.1, an older Sound Blaster card, and a cheap Yamaha card I just got off eBay.

The first Sound Blaster I found lying around in my room, so I wasn't too surprised when it didn't show up at all in Windows.

The second card, the Live! 5.1, had drivers automatically installed by Windows, and about a minute later, it just froze. When I restarted, it didn't detect the card, and it didn't detect it at all when I tried moving it to a different PCI slot.

I just tried the Yamaha card today, and Windows detected it, installed drivers for it, and when I went to move the speaker wire, I looked back, and Windows froze again. I restarted it, and again, it didn't detect anything at all. I haven't had a chance to switch the PCI slots for this one yet.

I'm going to try moving the Yamaha card when I have time, but I was wondering if anyone's seen this before. The Creative cards don't work on any computer I try them with now, and I'm hoping that the Yamaha will work if I move it to a different slot.

I think it's an Abit KR-7 board, I bought it a while ago, but I think that's what it was, and there's a Radeon 9600XT and a cheap networking card in the last PCI slot. I have no idea why none of these cards would work right, other than there being some weird compatibility issue with the motherboard.

Any ideas?

 

[WarC]

Hello McTimson, its been awhile since I've seen ya around.

Does the soundcard share IRQ addresses with other components in the system? That is usually Creative's response to an instability issue with their cards.

One thing you could try is resetting the configuration data in the BIOS. You can usually manually do that for IRQ assignments, or you could just jump the thing or take the battery out for awhile.

That would be my first guess.

Considering you've tried multiple cards and all on the same machine.

Other things off the top of my head: dust accumulation on the cards, oily/smudgy PCI contacts, that sort of thing.

 

[McTimson]

I'll give that a shot... but I thought IRQ addresses were pretty much history, I thought they were only an issue on older ISA boards?

 

[WarC]

I'll give that a shot... but I thought IRQ addresses were pretty much history, I thought they were only an issue on older ISA boards?

They are still there in the background. It is a fundamental part of PC architecture, but both the BIOS and Windows have the capability to control it automatically. Most cards in line with the latest bus standards are supposed to allow IRQ sharing as well, but it still crops up from time to time.

There are many times where an issue that was solved by jumping the BIOS or removing the battery was caused by such a conflict. The majority of the time its not something that PCs today have problems with.