UT LAN problem

[BlindFish]

I'm hoping someone out there might know how to fix my problem...

I'm trying to run Unreal Tournament on a small LAN (2 PCs with a crossover cable).. It worked fine in the past but I've just built a new machine and changed the bits around in the other one and now when I try to connect to a LAN game in UT the screen freezes on the older machine... The only major change in this machine is the graphics card... It had a GeForce 2 MX (which has now been put into my new machine) it's now got a Voodoo 3. The strange thing is that it will connect to the LAN if it's running in software and other games seem to work over the network...

I originally thought this was an IRQ problem as the Voodoo shares an IRQ with the Network card and there seems to be no way to fix this... but a mate of mine seems to think that it shouldn't be a problem and that shared IRQs are normal (I'm running Win 98SE) and that it's more likely to be a driver problem.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

[Xayd]

My money would be on the IRQ problem as well. You can share em just fine in Win2k/XP, but not 98.

Move the NIC, don't use PCI slot number one unless you have to.

[homer15]

well, now wait a minute; all pci componants share the same IRQ unless they are manually changed to do so otherwise. it is totally normal, because the PCI controller has it's only IRQ controller built in, so it only needs one interrupt to manage like 5 componants. if the graphics card is a pci card, that should not be the problem at all.
i would think it is a driver problem. or maybe it's the actual game configuration. if it's set up to look for a certain type of card with, say, open gl capabilities and it's not there, the system will sieze. since video works fine with everything else, i would lean more towards the game problem. but don't count out the driver problem.

[Jenni]

IRQ sharing is fine and normal in w2k and XP, but not it Win98.

First, is your Voodoo AGP or PCI? If it is AGP, PCI slot 1 on your MB shares an IRQ with the AGP slot, so move your NIC, and anything else for that matter, out of PCI slot 1. If it is a PCI video card, put it in PCI slot 1, becuase unless you have a 2 video card setup, the IRQ for your AGP slot isn't being used, so your PCI video card can use it.

Some other slots share IRQ's as well. Some boards with onboard sound share an IRQ between PCI slot 3 and the onboard sound. And on most boards, PCI slots 4 and 5 share an IRQ.

Under the PCI/Plug and Play section of your BIOS, it should be possible to manually assign IRQ's to certain PCI slots, such as IRQ 5 to whatever slot your sound card is in, and so forth. Toaster's explanation of IRQ sharing, found here explains all this in great detail, and gives a list of "ideal" IRQ assignments for specific devices.

[Xayd]

ACPI support in Win9x/ME is shotty at best (as is the rest of the OS ).

Yes, it works fine in the NT kernel releases of Windows, but not 98.

[BlindFish]

Cheers for the suggestions.

Things are beginning to make sense... The friend who suggested shared IRQs shouldn't be a problem is running win2000. I've also found that in fact it's not just that game causing the problem - others do exactly the same thing. Hopefully it's not a driver issue as I have the latest drivers for both the NIC and Voodoo (it's a PCI card) and there won't be any more new (official) Voodoo drivers (sob!)...

So I'm back at the IRQs... I have had a fiddle around in the BIOS trying to persuade them to change, I even swapped the NIC from my other PC (it's a newer card) to see if that would help - but no luck as yet... I'm not sure if my BIOS will let me assign IRQs in the way you suggest (I think it's an AWARD - I'll check out which version). One thing it does have is an option for 'plug and play OS' which as I understand it lets the OS assign IRQs - but this doesn't fix it either

Anyway - I'll let you know how I get on...

Cheers

[Greedo]

hey blindfish

generally you change IRQs in windows device manager
leave pnp os on in bios
then go to control panel, system, device manager
double click your nic and go to resources tab
then click the "set configuration manually" button
uncheck "use automatic settings", highlight the resource you want to change and click change settings
it will probably list your hardware conflicts at the bottom of the window
my highly unscientific method is to scroll around until i find an irq and io address range that don't cause problems, but someone else might have a reliable method for finding free settings

[BlindFish]

Looks like I've made some progress.

I tracked the problem down to the SCSI card I use to connect my scanner. It's an ISA card (my sound card is as well) and was using IRQ9 which apparently would be better used by the NIC. So I've set up a second hardware profile with it disconnected as I don't need to use the scanner when I'm playing games.

I am now trying to get the IRQs allocated to the proper devices but this doesn't seem to be happening... The device manager still isn't too happy about letting me change IRQ settings... any advice on possible workarounds?

Cheers for all the responses...

[BlindFish]

Argh!

IRQs were sent to plague me... I had a look on my new system (Abit KG7 Mobo, Duron 900 and 256Mb RAM) and I've got the same problem there. To be honest I got so carried away by the fact that it ran first time (I built it myself) I hadn't realy checked stuff like IRQs out. But it turns out three of my devices were sharing the same IRQ (OS = Win 98). I've managed to persuade the graphics card (AGP - GeForce 2MX) to move over to IRQ11 (they were all sharing 10) but the sound card and NIC refuse to budge!

The BIOS on the Abit lets me specify IRQs for devices (the other machine's BIOS doesn't do this) but Windoze seems to be ignoring it and still sticking the devices on 10. I set the NIC to 9 (a totally free IRQ!) but when the machine starts up it shows it as being on 10!

The weird thing is that I haven't had any major trouble with unexpected crashes etc on either machine (except on the older machine when trying to run a network game)...

So I've got two questions:

How do I change the IRQs? (Remembering that Device Manager deosn't give me an alternative to the IRQ that has been set)

And does it really matter?


Oh! And I have a suggestion... Shouldn't this site have a FAQ for questions like these that must pop up on a far too regular basis... Just a thought - I did search posts to try and find a solution before starting this thread but to no avail - maybe a FAQ would avoid threads being repeated...

[Jenni]

Go into BIOS. Set "plug and play aware OS" to NO. Then figure out what slot your cards are in, and assign the appropriate IRQ to that slot. For instance, If your NIC is in slot 3, then assign slot 3 IRQ 9. That should solve your problems.

[BlindFish]

Hmmm,

If I paid a little care and attention I might notice these things - but I don't remember seeing that option in the BIOS... Is it likely that it isn't available on a modern mobo?

I'll have another look - Cheers!

[BlindFish]

Well I finally narrowed my IRQ problem (on my old machine with the Voodoo 3)down to the ISA SCSI card I got with my scanner - with it in the machine there's no way of getting the network card to use IRQ 9 instead of 10 (which the Voodoo is on)... So it's just going to have to go. I'm sure a PCI replacement won't cost me too much and that will go into my new machine (which doesn't have any ISA slots)...

But I've still got the IRQ problem on the new machine (though with no apparent symptoms - crashes and so on). I've gone into the BIOS and set each device to a specific IRQ, but there doesn't seem to be an option to set 'Plug & PLay OS' to disabled - so Windoze is ignoring my IRQ settings and sticking my network and sound card on the same IRQ along with the USB controller - even though IRQ 5 and 9 are free for them to use.

So my question now is - is there a way of stopping Windows from doing this?