Shared IRQs a problem?

[Robbie Hatley]

As I mentioned in an earlier thread, I've been having

two problems with my Win2K system:

1. Every day or two, the system crashes. First my USB

mouse freezes, sound gets messed up, and network

goes offline. Then a few minutes later, everything

else (serial mouse, keyboard, etc) crashes as well.

2. System sometimes refuses to wake from Standby.



Today I noticed something in "System Information"

that I'm wondering might be related:



System Information report written at: 2010-02-05 09:34:38 PM

[Conflicts/Sharing]



Resource Device

IRQ 20 Standard OpenHCD USB Host Controller

IRQ 20 Standard OpenHCD USB Host Controller

IRQ 20 Standard Enhanced PCI to USB Host Controller

IRQ 20 NVIDIA nForce MCP Networking Controller

IRQ 20 NVIDIA(R) nForce(TM) MCP Audio Processing Unit

IRQ 20 NVIDIA(R) nForce(TM) Audio Codec Interface

IRQ 20 OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller



Is it really acceptable to have these things all sharing

IRQ 20? (I can't help but notice that most of the items

sharing IRQ 20 are exactly the items that malfunction

when my system crashes: USB mouse, Network, and audio.)



--

Curious,

Robbie Hatley

lonewolf at well dot com

www dot well dot com slant tilde lonewolf slant

 

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> IRQ 20 Standard OpenHCD USB Host Controller

> IRQ 20 Standard OpenHCD USB Host Controller

> IRQ 20 Standard Enhanced PCI to USB Host Controller

> IRQ 20 NVIDIA nForce MCP Networking Controller

> IRQ 20 NVIDIA(R) nForce(TM) MCP Audio Processing Unit

> IRQ 20 NVIDIA(R) nForce(TM) Audio Codec Interface

> IRQ 20 OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller

>

> Is it really acceptable to have these things all sharing

> IRQ 20? (I can't help but notice that most of the items

> sharing IRQ 20 are exactly the items that malfunction

> when my system crashes: USB mouse, Network, and audio.)

>



My laptop (IBM T41, 2005? vintage) is setup so all PCI devices operate on

one IRQ. No idea why! One IRQ for everything is the BIOS factory default.

However when I look at W2K Device manager I see various IRQ's assigned, thus

the OS overrides some BIOS settings (which is common). Yet IRQ 9 is shared

by MODEM, VIDEO, PCMCIA, USB, LAN and SOUND and everything runs fine!



As mentioned before, I'd view the event log looking for errors. There should

be no (no) problem sharing an IRQ amoungst various devices, unless of course

the MOBO was bad (hardware) or (more likely) poorly written software (driver

conflicts).



Last of all, some BIOS's alllow the OS to change certain IRQ assignments,

some don't. Some BIOS's allow YOU to assign IRQ's for some services ( video,

USB etc). Have you checked to see whether you can assign IRQ's in the BIOS?

Is your system setup to allow the OS to change IRQ settings? Other than the

above mentioned possibilities, you can uninstall software, reinstall, OR

uninstall the device in Device manager and reinstall (in the hopes new

resources will be assigned).