Superchips_Distributor: What a computer!

I've been successful in forcing an automatic reassignment of irq's etc by going to the System, Device Manager and deleting ALL of the device assignments -- and (here's the big one) start up in safe mode and do the same -- since that's where it remembers the 'good' or 'acceptable at least once' settings.

Once you re-boot, it will then re-shuffle everything and (hopefully -- remember it IS plug&Pray) you might be ok.

It is important to remove all of the assignments even in the Device Manager's System Devices -- since that is where the placeholders for shared irq's seem to pop up.

It's still mostly smoke and magic to me -- but on some windy days I think I can see thru some of the smoke.

Three monitors (!) Read that it could be done -- never tried it (please tell me WHY you did it). Are they all AGP? if so, how did you get three AGP slots? I have just one Diamond AGP that demands its own IRQ -- and is really finiky -- probably my biggest headache -- and certainly the reason why I have never tried to hook up more than one video card (plus -- somewhere I read that the primary video card on my computer would have to be in a slot OTHER than the AGP.

I think I've lost Flatlander again.



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Y2K™ Jim - N8JG@Hotmail.com

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Freezer,
How hard is it to format the drive? I've already upgraded the graphics and sound card. But the hard drive is alittle scary for me. I have a 15 gig hard drive but like to upgrade to a 30 gig 7200 rpm some day.

 

Freezer, I have a copy that I shouldn't have Its a pre-release. And it says that it isn't good anymore and that I should upgrade by Dec 1st! I was going to buy WinME for that computer because it works fine... So does this mean If I buy a new release it won't install on the P120? That would suck!

I'll switch to Linux or BeOS for that box if I can't install WinMe!

 

Mike T.

I've had IRQ conflicts to deal with ever since we left the DOS days! Adding a plotter (vinyl cutter) wreaks havoc.

Anyway you might want to try this. "Remove" the device setup....not physically, just the device setup. Then go back and install it manually, forcing the IRQ you want/need. It's still a PITA compared to DOS days, but I got it to work.

I've also noticed that sound card, modem, and printer/output device IRQs can often co-exist and share an IRQ peacefully.

Good luck!

Am I the only one that dislikes the "plug and pray" technology? It seems to me that in an attempt to make computers more user friendly, they have made it harder to deal with a "non standard" configuration.

 

I hear ya

GET Windows 2000, this OS saves you hours of $#?%?%?$$#@*?ing. Everything has been by the book for me with Win2K I mean I plug in my modem, start it up and it works 1st try, plugged in 2 network cards, start it up and baam it works (with out any config or CD), plug in a USB keyb and Mouse, windows 2000 finds it and installs it with out any trouble! I love this OS, it has got to be the best OS MS has ever made! On my system I have a ATI video card, a Matrox video card, 2 network cards (one for DSL modem, other for pluging a network to my computer), a SB live sound card, Diamond Modem, USB keyb and mouse, a Scandisk flash card reader (usb), a Zip disk, 2 hard drives, scanner, Apple laser printe, CD burner

And they all work perfectly and took no time or hassle to install I love win2K as you may see! Win98 I could never get it to work! Installing a PNP modem was pure hell on my clone with Win98! the system crashed many times as I tried to work on it! Now it never crashes! ANd I like the NTFS features...

WinME seems to me to have a good PNP feature like Win2K that's why I like it!

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Dumb questions... I'm thinking about getting a laptop soon (new Ford computers) and it comes with Me. The desk system I have now is 98... can I still network the two of them together to share printer, scanner, files, DSL, etc, or am I relegated to switch-boxes for the peripherals?

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I should never have opened this in the first place, now I've got a headache...

 

Hi Y2K,

Thanks for the tips, I'll give it a try perhaps.

On the multiple monitors, that's easy with Windows 98. One is AGP, and if you have AGP & PCI then the AGP is usually going to want to be the "primary" monitor, in my case I have 1 AGP & 2 PCI video cards. Do a lot of desktop publishing, on the Internet, etc., so I just wanted more screen real estate for better semi-multi-tasking, and just because it was neat, and I could. Windows 98 allows up to 8 or 9 monitors at the same time, more than you'll have slots for. The PCI slots closest to the processor are the highest priority video cards. Also, in the newest BIOS revisions for most boards, you can select in BIOS whether the AGP or the PCI video cards have boot priority, and thus becomes the default, or primary, display, which is the only one that will show anything until windows actually loads. While the system is booting, only the primary monitor will display anything, and then as windows loads, each monitor will come up with a message saying that it's video card has been initialized. Once windows finishes loading, the desktop shows on all screens. You can set all the monitors up as one huge desktop, or just multiple desktops, which is what I did. Very easy.

I've always done the multi-monitor thing using all ATI video cards, drivers are OK & stable for multi-monitor operations. I used a 21", a 19", and a 17" monitor in my combo. And of couse, I still wanted a lot more...

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Mike Troyer
Performance Products, Inc.
National Distributor of Superchips
(540) 862-9515
Email: mtroyer@compuserve.com
Performance Products F150Online Superchip ordering system: F150Online Superchip Ordering System
First National F-150 Online Rally Event Organizer

 

eph1fifty, I kinda figured you had something other than Gold. Since you have a 120mhz, you may not be able to install WinME. If I were you I'd surf Microsoft's web site. Also search the Developers site, msdn.microsoft.com I agree though, W2K (or NT) is the way to go. The differences in stability are like night and day.

Jupiterak, so you want to format your drive do you? The actually formatting of the drive is easy. However, partitioning and setting up the OS may be a little more than you want to do. I'd recommend you find a friend who knows computers and have them help you.


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As an advanced warning, this is a long post. I tried to answer as many questions as I could that I found in this thread. Here goes…

Mike,

I would agree with a few of the suggestions that have already been mentioned here. Go into safe mode and check for ghosted drivers if you haven’t done that already. Those can cause conflicts. If that doesn’t work, I would go back into safe mode and yank ALL of the drivers, reboot, then see what happens when everything redetects and reinstalls. If that doesn’t work, then I’d go back into safe mode, yank everything again, shut down, pull everything but one of the devices, then start the one-device-at-a-time approach to see if at least you could figure out what is causing the problem. Does your Soundblaster Live have the LiveDrive? That could be one of the reasons that it is taking 2 IRQ. I’m not sure though, I don’t have one of those myself and haven’t had the opportunity to play with one. You may also consider building yourself a small network and “farming” some of those devices out to the server. Let us know how it goes.

Jupiterak,

Formatting the hard drive has nothing to do with removing the hard drive from the system. Formatting a drive prepares it for installing a new operating system or reloading the current operating system (just to keep this simple). Basically, formatting a drive wipes it clean. Anything that is on a hard drive before formatting it will no longer be there. If you were going to do that to your hard drive, it would be best to blow the partitions and recreate them while you’re at it. It is not as difficult as it sounds. You would take your Windows98 (or Windows95, whichever you are using) startup disk and boot from it. For this step, I would go ahead and load with cdrom support when given the option in Windows98. Once you get to an A prompt, go ahead and change to your cdrom drive just to make sure that it works properly when booting off of this floppy. You wouldn’t want to wipe everything out then find out afterward that you cannot reload your system because you can’t access your cdrom drive. Type in “d:” and press enter (or whatever drive letter the cdrom drive is). At the d prompt, load a cd and type “dir”. It should give you a list of what is on the cd. If this happens, you’re in good shape. Type “a:” to return to an A prompt. Type “fdisk” and hit enter. It will bring up a screen asking if you want to enable large disk support. Type “y” and hit enter. This will take you to the fdisk options menu. I am assuming that you only have one hard drive in this computer. At the options menu, press “4” and hit enter. If the computer sees the entire hard drive as one drive, there should be only one item listed on the next screen and it should say “PRI DOS” under type and usage should be 100%. If this is the case, press Esc to return to the fdisk options menu. Press “3” to delete partitions. At the next menu screen, choose “1” to select primary dos partition. At the next screen, you will type 3 things: press “1” to select which partition to delete, then you need to type in the volume label EXACTLY as it appears under volume label at the top of the screen, then “y” when it asks if you are sure. At this point, your partition is gone and your info is no longer accessible from the hard drive. Press escape to return to the fdisk options menu. Now, you want to recreate the primary partition. Choose “1” for create. At the next screen, press “1” again for create primary partition. It will ask you if you would like to use max available space and make it active, press “y”. When it is done, it will tell you to press Esc to return. Press Esc twice to return to the a prompt. Do a CTRL-ALT-DEL to restart the computer with the floppy still in. When it asks, choose to start with cdrom support. When you get to the a prompt, type “format c: /u/c” and press enter. Press “y” at the prompt and let it go. When it finishes and asks for a volume name, press enter. This will take you back to an a prompt. Type “d:” to change to your cdrom drive. At the d prompt, type “setup” and follow the on-screen directions and just choose the options that are recommended if you are not sure what options you want. You should understand that if you have multiple hard drives in the machine or your OEM boot disk is set up to assign your cdrom drive as a different letter, such as G: or K: or whatever, the directions above would be slightly different.
The above is the process for formatting the drive. If you are changing the hard drive out for a larger drive, it’s about as easy as upgrading a video or sound card. You would disconnect a ribbon cable and a power cable and remove a few screws. Just remember that you need to identify which pin on the back of the hard drive is pin 1 and the end of the cable that has the red stripe on it goes to pin 1. Also be sure to jumper the replacement hard drive the same as the original to keep things simple. If the original is jumpered as master, go ahead and jumper the replacement as master, cable select if cable select, etc. It’s not that difficult at all to do this stuff, it just takes a bit of courage to jump into it if you haven’t done it before. Once you go through the process and see that it isn’t hard to do, it’ll be a piece of cake from then on.

GIJoeCam,

You can still network them together without any problems. In fact, the setups for 98 and ME should look very similar. As long as you know what you need to do in order for them to communicate to each other (network settings) there should be no problem. Remember things such as using the same workgroup name on both systems and including the proper protocols, yadda yadda yadda.

Eph1fifty,

Why don’t you just go ahead and upgrade that system to at least a 150Mhz if it will accept it? You could get those chips for damn near free now. That way, you wouldn’t have to worry about any compatibility issues with current operating systems. I would send you one if I had one, but I only have a couple of extra 133s lying around.

 

Hi Preyhunter,

Yes, I have the Live Drive.

I'm going to have to pull everything and try to get it to work, but I don't think that even that is going to do it, as I've already pulled out everything except the modem and they still all wanted to stack up on IRQ11 when I added them back in physically one at a time, grrr....

I've got 2 more things I'm going to try before I declare it a bad mainboard, & thanks for all your suggestions.

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Mike Troyer
Performance Products, Inc.
National Distributor of Superchips
(540) 862-9515
Email: mtroyer@compuserve.com
Performance Products F150Online Superchip ordering system: F150Online Superchip Ordering System
First National F-150 Online Rally Event Organizer

[This message has been edited by Superchips_Distributor (edited 11-02-2000).]

 

WOW what a post
I agree with Frezzer, and Prayhunter. I just got a new computer it came with Melleniun and it works great. However if you have Win98 on your computer, and is working fine DON'T mess with it.
I have been spending time on the Dell message board, and there are many posts of people who tried to install Mellenium without formatting there hard drive and have had major problems.
I've only had the Mellenium for about 3 weeks, so far so good, but not a huge improvement over win 98

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Mike, have you tried to find a newer bios revision for the mainboard? Sometimes they work wonders with stuff like this..

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Preyhunter,
Thank you for the detailed instructions. I'm gonna give it a try and upgrade to a 30 gig/7200 RPM drive this weekend.

 

WoW - For our Cdn. friends - that watch Royal Canadian Air Farce -
"HI, I'm Mike - from Canmore"
Serialy though, I just purchased a laptop - with ME installed. Have '98 on the "big" machine - I love ME, but i'm NOT doing stuff like you guys are. - GREAT POST - LOVE every line.
I' am glad Mike T. that you are into computer chips - I'm am still trying to figure D. L. saving time ?????
Loved the Sub post. Hated the out come