IRQ's and things

T

theultimatechuff

Geek Trainee
A friend of mine has been having trouble with his PC among other things he seems to have a dodgy IDE channel. If his CDWriter is placed on the secondary channel it doesnt function correctly and freezes the PC, it won't install a whole piece of software.

I lent him my copy of SiSoft Sandra and it came up with a couple of things that are strange it warned that he had a 'disabled host controller' and also about 7 things use the IRQ 11 I remember back in the day this used to be a bad thing but not sure if it still matters in this plug and play era.

Sorry to waffle but im just trying to set the scene best I can, I'm going to have a look at it so any help would be much appreciated.

Basically - any idea what this 'disabled host controller' is; and whether that or the dodgy IRQ settings would contribute to a malfunctioning drive on the second channel or a PC that crashes loads.


His Specs (off top of my head)
300W PSU
Elite mo-bo w/ VIA chipset (K7VZA ?)
AMD Athlon 1400
512MB SDRAM
40GB HDD
FireWire card

Oh running Windows XP

EDIT: Tried installing latest 4in1 drivers from VIA - no change.
 
have you tried going to the BIOS? and seeing if you could find something to do with IRQ's? I'm sure there's something there. As I use, to have the K7VZA montherboard, if that is the one, he has?
 
First off, the IRQ thing: that's due to ACPI under Windows 2000 and XP. It's not a problem. 2nd, I've heard that the particular board is a little particular about the PSU used. If it's a good one, such as Antec, Sparkle, or Enermax, you probably can get away with that 300W.
 
Thanks for help

I'm guessing its a dodgy-botcho-generic one from the computer fair he bought the comp at, I take it a higher wattage would be preferable?

Any ideas what a 'disabled host controller' may be referring to or is this as vague as it sounds?
 
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