PCA Forums

First off, my system configuration:

Tbird 1.2Ghz B-stepping
Iwill KK266
448MB of ram (various sticks... 256, 128 and 64 megs)
MSI geforce2 pro
Aureal Vortex 2 soundcard
Adaptec AIC-7850 SCSI controller
ASIX 10/100 Ethernet Card
Maxtor 20 gig...
WD 17 gig...
IBM 10 gig
Imation 8x20 cdr SCSI
Toshiba 16x DVD


i have the Maxtor as my C drive. it is partitioned into 2 parts. the c drive gets approx 14 gigs and the f drive gets approx 6 gigs. before all my reformatting and installing, i had windoes 98se running very smoothly. I did a fresh install of 98se onto the c drive partition and had to do a bit of work getting it to run stably. for some unknown reason, while loading windows, it will sometimes quit and display the "it is now safe to turn off your computer" screen. If i restart again, the video resolution will be reset to 640x480 mode and an error box says that my video card is incorrectly configured or something like that.

in windows 2000, whenever i try anything... it just freezes up. Surf the web... freeze. Listen to mp3.... freeze. Use AIM.... freeze.

98se has a tendency to freeze up while i use winamp and IE at the same time.

has anyone had experience with kk266s and aureal vortex 2s? I'm pretty sure that the sound card is the culprit... but i'm very baffled because 98se was running perfectly right before i installed win2k.

You may have a PCI IRQ channel sharing problem (this is NOT the same as an IRQ conflict). This problem does not affect ISA cards.

Why you didn't have it before I don't know - did you move any cards? Did you change any settings in BIOS? Activate or deactivate any onboard devices?

This problem is very common with NICs, some PCI sound cards (the SBLive in particular is VERY prone to it) and SCSI controller cards. These cards do NOT like to share a PCI IRQ channel I explain the problem in detail here with a fix: http://soldcentralfl.com/quakecoop/glfaq5.htm#5_9

Since more than one card could be causing the problem, you'll be chasing your tail unless you troubleshoot it one card at a time.

Make a note of which slot each card is currently installed in right now. Pull ALL your PCI cards except the video card and boot up. Make sure the system is working okay. If the problem consistently happens when playing a game, run that game now and make sure it's okay (most games will run just fine without a sound card installed by-the-way).

If the system seems stable shut down and install ONE CARD AT A TIME. Start with the sound card as that's usually the prime culprit. Make sure that the sound card does NOT share an IRQ with any other device. If it does, or the system acts up, move the card to a different slot until it's resolved.

Repeat this process with all the PCI cards starting with NIC card next if there is one.

Hope this helps...