Constant Multimedia Infinite Loops/Crashes

melon

MS-DOS 2.0
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Joined
13 Feb 2002
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Okay, here's my problem. Any time I run anything multimedia related--games, CDs, MP3s, video files, DVDs, etc.--suddenly, the sound infinitely loops on the note it was playing and everything freezes (except my SNES emulator, which advances forward without me doing anything, but still has the infinite sound loop). The only way I can restart is by doing a cold boot. There is no rhyme or reason in regards to "when." It can happen immediately (one time, it looped/froze during the startup sound!) or it can happen a half hour later. All I know is that this looping/freezing is inevitable.

FYI, I am running a 1.3 GHz AMD processor on an Asus A7A266 motherboard. BIOS is updated to latest version (10/2001). I have an onboard C-Media surround sound chip and an ATI Radeon 32 MB DDR video board. Running Windows XP Professional on top of that. I used to run Windows 2000 Professional on this machine, and everything ran perfectly. BTW, my installation of Windows XP was a new installation, rather than an upgrade, and I even went as far as to format the system partition during installation.

Does anyone have any idea as to what is wrong and how to fix this? Thanks...

Melon
 
I had a similar problem with my ATI All-In-Wonder DDR 32mb... the drivers are crap and whenever I have something running from ATI's multi-media center and fire up something else (so far just a certain game) then I'll get the loop/crash. My guess is it's your ATI stuff that's the cause. Just make sure you close out of anything in that program group before going into anything else that you know conflicts with it for now - hopefully ATI will get their stuff right soon.
 
Thanks...I'm keeping that in mind. I had to do a lot of driver changes when I installed this, and, partly, I wonder if I have a lot of corrupted residuals of "uninstalled" drivers. Leave it to Microsoft to have an alternate definition of "uninstall" than the rest of us. :rolleyes:

Does anyone else have any ideas as well?

Melon
 
Hi, I think there was something similar on this board. It was recommended that the sound card be moved to another slot. Not exactly your problem he was getting clicks and pops on boot up. May be worth a try.

Also make sure your ATI card has its own IRQ.
 
Actually, I think the IRQ issue was the problem, although I haven't tested sufficiently enough to see if this is the true case. Anyway, in the BIOS, I had the PnP OS option on, which allowed Windows to set its own IRQ settings for the hardware. I now have it turned off, so the BIOS has control over the IRQ settings. When it was on, it had the video card, modem, and a PCI to USB controller all on IRQ 5. Now that it is off, it put the video card and modem on IRQ 11, with the controller still on IRQ 5.

So far so good, but if I find that the problem has still not been fixed, how do I change hardware IRQs, namely, move the modem to a different IRQ and keep the video card on IRQ 11?

Melon
 
Oh and BTW, I can't move my sound, because the sound chip is built-in on the motherboard. No PCI sound cards at all.

Melon
 
Hi melon, you should be able to change interupts in the BIOS in PCI configuration. Pick the PCI slot your modem is in and change it from AUTO to the IRQ you want.

Look in system information and see if you have a IRQ that is not assigned, it won't be in the table. For example if you don't use a PS/2 mouse port you can use that IRQ, which is 12. There should be a PS/2 BIOS entry you can pick AUTO or ENABLE. Pick ENABLE then assign IRQ 12 to the PCI slot your modem is in.

Check in system information after and you should see IRQ12 assigned to your modem and mother board resources.

Now this one I am not to sure of, since your modem has been assigned IRQ 5 it is plug and play and is not of course using IRQ3 or 4 which is normally used for COM ports. I believe you could disable the COM ports(if not used of course) in the BIOS and use IRQs 3 or 4 as available IRQs.
 
Thanks for all your help, but I finally got so frustrated that I reformatted and reinstalled it. At least I can say that Microsoft has made it very easy to do new installations. Funny enough, the IRQ settings changed itself to the right spots.

As it stands, I don't see any problems, but I'm not taking any chances. I'm currently slowly adding my software, making sure to do regular System Restores. This system has already fixed two conflictions--one from my scanner and one from my audio driver--that were causing annoying seeking from the 3.5" A: drive during startup. Luckily, Windows Update had better drivers for both. Unfortunately, like everything with Microsoft, System Restore is never perfect, and I've had to do some manual deleting in the Program Files directory just to clean it perfectly to stop the A: seeking, but it has been fairly painless so far.

Much thanks to this forum. It is very useful!

Melon
 
you can change whatever irqs you want in the bios if your in acpi mode in windows ,and you should be, each time you boot up acpi will assighn the irqs itself, so basically you are really changing nothing in the bios.....why bother...cause it will never be what it was in bios, save a coincedence, my geforce3, ethernet card, sound card, and pci steering all load up on irq 9 on boot up, and i have never had 1 conflict pop screech, or jumpled graphics, and stuttering...:eek:
 
ohh ya i forgot

if you have no pci sound card you should be running great, cause pci sound cards hog pci band width more than anything...and if your in acpi mode in windows and you just gotta set your own irqs you can switch to that other mode other than acpi, in device manager, lol i cant remember what it was called im so tired..but be for warned, if your not in acpi mode and u didnt do a repair or reinstal of xp, and you try to go back,you will be wiping it clean so i would back up....;)
 

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