you should be assigning IRQs in the operating system, not in the BIOS. Leave the BIOS to automatic, then do the IRQ assignment in Device Manager. Bah, and for a while you had me thinking you actually knew what you were doing.

heh...anyway...ermm, no, a failing HD shouldn't cause IRQ issues. If you're nervous, to a scandisk on it, with the surface check (takes forever). As long as the drive doesn't have a bunch of bad sectors or makes clunking noises occasionally, you should be ok.

I have a vague idea of what I'm doing, if that counts.


Anyways, i knew you should be able to do it in windows so i went to device manager, but it won't let me re-assign. All the necesseray stuff is greyed out, check the screenie for what i mean. So since it says "use automatic features" is on, but i can't change it, i thought that maybe changing the setting to "manual" in BIOS would be enough to enable me to re-assign IRQ's in the BIOS or windows, but apparently windows isn't being very cooperative.

Maybe i forgot something that CAN enable me to un-check the "use automatic features" box. Prolly sumthing to with ACPI or whatever that thing is called. Anyways, i'm off to bed. Tried to install Undying, and it crashed DURING install. I didn't even have to start the damn thing. pffff

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I got winXp installed now...and guess what? BSOD's! I already tweaked it a bit with your guide Satis (which is really neat, tnx for that), so i got rid of the in my situation most annoying things like auto-reboot.

So...install winXP, install drivers, blabla. Try to install postal 2, first install: BSOD during install. Aight, so i note down the error, reboot, and check what its propeties are. Apparently to do with keyboard. I go to device manager, see that keyboard is using standard driver. Then i go to "keyboard" in control panel, and when i press the "hardware" panel in that screen PC freezes up.

So, i think "aha, maybe it's the keyboard driver" Reboot, check back of keyboard, get drivers for it, and re-install postal. This time it installs ok, but won't fire up because a file is missing. Since that's no driver-issue i think; let's try mafia.

Install mafia, halfway: BANG, BSOD. Different error code now. After that: few BSOD's from just using messenger, explorer and flasfxp.

I think i can say by now that this is either:

->a hardware conflict
->driver incompatibilities. But i wouldn't have the fucked idea what in fuck's name could be wrong. Sorry for the profanity, but this is getting on my nerves.

I guess i'll have to carry it in at my pc store sometime soon i guess...have to turn it around alot to get them to place this under the guarantee tho i think, since i didn't order a complete system but just the basics. Bah, bah and bah.

you may want to try ripping out some parts. Disable some of the unboard stuff, remove unnecessary hardware. Maybe that'll help figure out the issue. Hell, it might be RAM. No real telling at this point. Sorry this has been such a pain for you. I've never had THAT many problems.

Tnx for the moral asupport and advice so far tho. Maybe i should try to disable every device seperately and try over yeah. Sound, USB ports, HD's, Netwerk card etc. come to mind. We'll see...i'll prolly be letting my pc off the hook for a week or two anyhoo seeing as i got three exams coming up (9th, 10th, 15th) and i gotta meet someone on sunday as well. Blah. So my monster PC will be a classy mailbox/typewriter. It's so sad it's almost funny. Since i smiled just yet typing that i guess i'll be allright.

hehe, don't sweat it. It may take some work, but you're bound to figure out the issue eventually. You wait... I bet it turns out to be something stupid in the end.

Knowing my luck it will be something stupid yeah.


Anyways..i downloaded the latest drivers for all onboard mobo devices (network card, USB 2.0 controller and sound), my gfx card, and my latest BIOS update. And directx 9.b. I'm gonna install all that shit now and hope anything changes.


Btw, i just noticed on boot after yet another crash the message

"secondary IDE channel: no 80 conductor cable installed"

Any clue as to what that would mean? It's only appeared since a day ago or sumthing. Blah.

K, so i changed the old IDE cable between my primary HD and my motherboard with a new one. I wanted to do the same with the cable that connects my secondary HD, my CDR drive and my motheboard, but that one was too few pins so i let the old cable in there.


I reboot, start GTA vice city for trying and it ran a solid 15 minutes without any problems. (then i quit the game to write this and eat) But ofcourse i still got the "secondary IDE blabla" at boot since i only replaced my primary cable.

I'll be testing more solidly later tonite, gotta eat first.

Mmmmmm, this is looking good!!

Played GTA for half an hour, no crashes! Had a mnor error on quitting the game but that was just a windows-pop-up error thing that only needs "ok" clicking.

Then i decided to put it to the test; and installed Undying. Smooth install, smooth config of vid card, and game runs properly. I did have a "general protection fault" some 10 minutes in the game which took me back to desktop; but no BSOD! I can cope with protection faults as long as those BSOD's stay the fuck away.

It seems like i might have solved it dudes...but i wouldn't know how.

I replaced the old IDE cable with a new one, but kept the secondary one; plus i took my 512 ram bar in and out of its slot. Let's hope the non-crashing stays this way aye!

Nice Rinox - but it will stuff up. It's programmed into Windows....

Hehe...true enough.


I was victorious a bit too soon, as i just had another BSOD in postal 2. But at least i can play for a while before i get one now. Mmm

have you defragged yet? Alot of times that'll fix intermittent game crashes. Something to try.

Ignore the '80 ping' thing. You need an 80 pin cable to run at ATA100+... but if it's not an ATA100 or ATA133 drive it doesn't matter. And even then, it's not THAT big a deal, it'll just slow your HD transfers down a smidgen.

Good point on defrag; i haven't defragged or formatted my second HD since ,uhm, i bought it a year ago lol. And i used it a LOT to install, de-install, transfer files, delete files, very large files like erh...mIRC word documents

So it's no surprise that thing is fragmented as shit really. Will do defrag soon and let you know. And if it is an indication: played some more Postal 2, an hour long without any problems. So idd will be fragmentation or sumthing.


LOL, i just did the analyze thing in the defrag tools; and it says about my D: drive "you shouldn't defrag this drive yet" That's the biggest crock of shit i've ever heard keeping in mind my previous, ZERO defrags.

Anyways...now i'm more or less past that, some other less important questions. Atm i got my C: (8gig) drive as only thing on my primary IDE channel, and my D: (40 gig) drive as master and CDR as slave on my secondary. Would it be better if i set C: and D: on the same, primary IDE channel? With C master and D slave obviously. Or is it just fine like this?

I'm gonna replace the IDE cable anyway sometime i think, even if it's not really gonna change much. Those things are cheap as hell anyway, even i can afford that.


P.S. postal 2 r0x0rs..nothing like having a bank vault full of cops burning

hehe, yea, postal2 is pretty cool for the pure carnage value.

I wouldn't change the drive setup. The way you have it is fine. In fact, it'll be faster to transfer stuff from c: to d: and vice versa the way it is right now.

Kewl, didn't know that. Tnx for replying.