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**chihuang** · 3 January 2000, 14:16

I have my MAX and Aureal SQ2500, which is a Aureal 8830 chipset with A3D 2.0 support, run together without any problem. Since your sound chip is built-in on board, you may want to try if you can disable the chip and check if it's the problem of G400 + A3D or it's the problem of your G400 itself.

[This message has been edited by chihuang (edited 03 January 2000).]

**SaltedPeanut** · 3 January 2000, 14:25

When I disable the sound onboard everything works fine.. It is just when I enable it. everything gets messed up. I don't have another graphics card to see if its the cause of it or not..

But i'm sure I heard some where that the A3D 2.0 and Matrox Drivers don't work well together..

**chihuang** · 3 January 2000, 14:48

Then you may want to check on your IRQ conflicts. List the IRQ usage in order for us to know what your problem might be.

**TomDavidson** · 3 January 2000, 15:15

Both the Aureal Vortex AND the Matrox G400 are notoriously picky about IRQs, a fact that _I_ learned about a week ago when I was having a very similar problem.

Firstly, both of them refuse to work properly unless they're on IRQ 9 or higher. To be honest, I have no idea why -- but moving your sound card (and the fact that it's onboard doesn't really matter, unless it turns out that the chipset itself is bad) to a higher IRQ might solve the problem all by itself.

Additionally, both cards practically DEMAND to be all by their lonesomes on their respective IRQs; they don't like sharing, and sometimes even PCI steering causes problems. This is why you get problems with Vortex cards installed alongside Matrox cards; generally, the system doesn't have enough completely free IRQs to automatically support both without any sharing. Pop into the System Information screen to see if you can move them both to completely free IRQs (with PCI steering, if necessary).

Finally, in my case, I found that the Vortex card kept locking up the system until I physically set the IRQ of the PCI slot in BIOS to 9. You may want to check your BIOS and see if there's an option for setting the IRQ of the onboard sound.

If none of THESE work, I'm sure some of the smarter members of the forum can help.

**paulcs** · 3 January 2000, 16:33

I've used Matrox and Aureal chips together for a couple of years now, G200's and G400's, Vortex 1 and 2, and I can't remember experiencing a single driver conflict. We saw far more problems with the Soundblaster Live and the G400 than we did with any Aureal chip.

I agree with the previous posts. I suspect you're have a good old fashioned IRQ conflict. As Tom mentioned, both board can be a bit piggy and picky about IRQ's. Because you have an on-board soundcard, you don't have the luxury of moving your soundcard from slot to slot to see what works.

Your soundcard requires two IRQ's: one for PCI Mulitfunction Adapter and the chip (they typically share an IRQ), and the other for Soundblaster Emulation (which likes IRQ 5 a lot and doesn't like sharing with anything).

What I do is disable, at least temporarily, some devices I don't need at the moment (or at all) to make room for the board and Soundblaster Emulation. After the soundboard drivers have successfully installed, I disable Soundblaster Emulation, re-enable devices I intend to use, and juggle IRQ's as need be.

Here's what I suggest:

Unistall whatever soundcard drivers you managed to install.

Check your IRQ's in Windows. Get an idea of what's where.

Disable some stuff you don't need, at least temporarily: your printer port, USB, a serial port, ACPI (you'll probably have to do that in the BIOS), etc.

Reinstall your soundcard drivers.

Once that is done, disable Soundblaster Emulation, both in Windows and in your autoexec.bat file. If you don't play DOS games, it's pretty much pointless and it takes up an entire IRQ all by itself.

Keep the devices you don't intend to use disabled. If you intend to use only one serial port or you don't need either, keep them disabled. If you don't intend to use any of Windows' wacky power management schemes, keep ACPI disabled.

Any other IRQ issues can be dealt with afterwards, either by juggling PCI cards or in your system BIOS. But if I'm correct, and you just don't have the room to install a device that requires two IRQ's, then you probably make room for it first.

Remember, the G400 likes its own IRQ and it likes IRQ 9 and above.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

**Zwisch** · 3 January 2000, 19:10

I and several friend also used the same G400 and vortex 2 and all works perfectly fine. I would simply reocmmend that you try your aureal card in another PCI slot.

Z

**paulcs** · 3 January 2000, 21:17

He can't. It's built into the board.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

**SaltedPeanut** · 3 January 2000, 22:05

O.k. This is what I have tried to see what the hell is going on. I have 3 PCI slots and 1 AGP slot on this motherboard. The Adaptec SCSI card is in the 2nd slot and the IBM network card is in the 1st slot...

I installed the A3D vortex 2.0 drivers. 2040 edition. Now.. I can listen to sound and everything seems to work fine. It is when I reboot after I installed the drivers. When I reboot it goes along and when it hits the desktop. "Explorer crash" window pops up. and half of my icons are gone from the desktop. If I try to hit cancel it re-appears right away. I can't even hit the start button to shut down properly... When I finally shut down I turn the computer back on and goto the bios and disable onboard sound. Now when I boot up everything is fine again..

Can an IRQ conflict really **** up your windows OS ? ?

**Mark F** · 3 January 2000, 23:13

>Can an IRQ conflict really **** up your windows OS ? ?<

YES, it sure can. I don't beleive there is any problem with the G400.Vortex2 combo. I have used most combo of G200, G400, and Vortex1 (mx200), Vortex2 (mx300), and Vortex2 Advanced (SQ2500). Never had a problem; even with both G200 or G400 and sound card useing IRQs below 9. But, I must admit I have never tried with SB Emulation (DOS) on; I have always saved that IRQ. Oh, I even shared and IRQ with the sound cards without problems (right now SQ2500 is shareing with USB); G400 always on it's own.

Go into DEVICE MANAGER, COMPUTER, PROPERTIES, IRQ; and give us a list of what's where. I'm confident there is a device conflict going on.

Mark F.

------------------
OH NO, my retractable cup holder swallowed a CD

[This message has been edited by Mark F (edited 04 January 2000).]

**paulcs** · 4 January 2000, 01:49

I checked your motherboard manual. "In theory," PCI 1 & 2 and the AGP slot are not shared, but I really think you have a pile-on somewhere.

I think you should do what Mark suggests and post your IRQ's. I have a configuration similar to yours--G400, SCSI board, NIC, and Vortex 1 or 2--in every machine I have. I have modems in a couple as well. (You have that digital camera input that takes up an IRQ.) And I have to do an IRQ juggling act every time I install Windows and my sound card drivers.

No driver conflicts, however. It really sounds like like an IRQ conflict.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

**SaltedPeanut** · 4 January 2000, 10:49

O.k. I have gone to the IRQ's and this is what is showing. I disabled the COM1 / COM2 and LPT1 port as I do not use those on this computer...

IRQ 0 = System Timer
IRQ 1 = Keyboard
IRQ 2 = (Programmable interrupt controller)
IRQ 3 = COM 1
IRQ 4 = COM 2
IRQ 5 = (USB PCI to Host controller)
IRQ 6 = Floppy Disk Controller
IRQ 7 = LPT1
IRQ 8 = (System CMOS/Realtime clock)
IRQ 9 =
IRQ 10 = IBM Ethernet
IRQ 11 = Matrox G400
IRQ 12 = PS/2 Mouse
IRQ 13 = (Numeric Data processor)
IRQ 14 = (was the A3D 2.0 soundchip)
IRQ 15 = SCSI Card

--------------------------------

The strange thing is when I disable the USB controller in the Bios it still shows up on the system device manager saying it is enabled. I noticed that the USB PCI to host changes from 5 to 14 when I disable the onboard sound. Any more help guys, I appreciate the help from everyone who is trying to help on this one.

Peanut
3DC

**SaltedPeanut** · 4 January 2000, 11:10

I have a bigger problem now. I do not know what I done.. I uninstalled the drivers and then I removed the multimedia device from the "Device Manager"....

Now when I boot up with the sound chip enabled. I get a blue screen of death before the desktop comes up.. After I hit return or space bar to proceed after the blue death. I get a black screen and nothing in the CTRL-ALT-DEL menu box.. Everything is blank in it. hehehe.

I guess a reformat seems to be in hand...

**Mark F** · 4 January 2000, 13:44

Are you useing any of the on-board IDE ports?

When you boot with the sound enabled is there any thing that comes up telling you what devices are on what IRQ? I get a listing, with the sound card listed as MUTIMEDIA DEVICE and it's assignment. Thats with an AWARD bios, not sure with AMIs (I think that's what the P3B's use).

As your assignment 'move' with different devices enabled/disabled this might be usefull. I know on some setups Win98 will 'overide' the disableing of the USB (ie. it finds it even when turned off in the BIOS), but I haven't heard of sutch a thing with COM and LPT ports. This leads me to ask, Are you sure you disabled them?

Mark F.

------------------
OH NO, my retractable cup holder swallowed a CD

**The PIT** · 4 January 2000, 13:46

Now I suggest boot up in safe mode and see if it has removed the sound drivers. If it has and safe mode works you might as well disable the usb if you're not using it.
Does the blue screen of death give the name of the file causing the problems? If it does the file might still hiding in registry and windows is calling it and then a file that has been removed. Remove from the reg after making a backup and see if you can get back in.

Announcement

G400 and A3D 2.0 will not work.

G400 and A3D 2.0 will not work.

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