Hey folks, I'm a fan of 2k, but I'm getting a little miffed about these IRQ problems I'm having. I have a graphics card, sound, and network, all on IRQ 11. If I remove the network from DM, restart, it puts it on 7. But if again, I restart, the Network card goes back on 11. It's driving me nutz. The cards are all physically seperated by pci slots and all cards are pci. Bios gives the option of choosing and IRQ for a particular PCI slot, but it has no effect. Anyone have any suggestions, possible a way to force irqs in 2k? Thanks in advance.

Are the cards refusing to work due to conflict? PCI Devices should be able to share IRQs if PCI Steering is working properly. If they all work, don't worry about it.
Al

Try to reserve all the irq`s you DONT want the card to go into. Leave ex. one irq available so card has no option but to go in that irq. To make it stay there, u can ex. uncheck the "use automatic settings" for this device.

im not sure how smart this is, but it works for me..

anyway, are the cards making any conflict?

no, they aren't truly conflicting, however, when i do any downloading, my music starts to have small pops or glitches, the kind of thing that normally wouldn't bother someone, but not only am I a big fan of music, but I have a pretty high quality system hooked up to it....plus, I'm a computer fan, and it bothers me when something isn't working.

how do i reserve the irqs?

This one is easy to fix.
When you installed you went with W2K ACPI.
This causes all IRQs to share.
Goto device manager> Select Computer category > Select ACPI computer etc > Update driver > Use Standard PC driver for single processor or MPS multiprocessor for dual.
For all those wanting to know how to stop it installing in the first place....simply press F5 right at the start of the install when it asks for F6 for scsi drivers etc.
Then select on eof the above PC types.