chiark

Evenin' All.

My PC is playing silly buggers. The DVD drive in particular is really getting on me thrupennies...

I'm running Win2K SP2 on an Epox 8k7a+ mobo. Main drive is on the RAID controller. Connected to primary IDE is a plextor 16/10/32 and on secondary slave is a Samsung SD612S DVD.

If I select the DVD drive properties from Device Manager with no disc in the drive, I get told that my drive is Region 2. All well and good. If I put a DVD in the drive (anything, you name it), and select DVD drive properties I get told that I am using no region. If I try to set it, it fails. Consequently any DVD playback s/w says "'k off, not playing that".

I also can dual boot into ME. Guess what? Works perfectly...

Any clues? Tried updating firmware, software, drivers, ...

Finally, IRQ steering on Win2K. Why is it so ****, and how do you turn the stuff off and set IRQs manually?

(a very frustrated) Nick.

ChrisB

I presume everything is sitting on the same IRQ?

All down to ACPI isn't it?

chiark

Yes, most things are on the same IRQ. Tried to steer 'em away, but ACPI knows best.

WinME works perfectly. I'm tempted to reinstall, but not quite tempted enough yet...

DominicA

"Finally, IRQ steering on Win2K. Why is it so ****, and how do you turn the stuff off and set IRQs manually?"

To turn it off, disable in bios. In system, hardware, device manager, COMPUTER - update driver and select standard PC (warning, warning, WARNING) this does work but it is not my fault if your PC dies and you need to reinstall. I believe this to be a one way, one time only operation (may not be tho)... only other way is to select standard pc manually while doing install or disabling ACPI in bios prior to install.

IRQ sharing is perfectly valid and should work fine. If not try moving PCI cards around, disabling any ports you don't use in the bios, using newest mobo drivers (esp if you're running a crap VIA board)..

chiark

Cheers for that. I couldn't believe that moving cards around was the answer, but it's alleviated the problems... The mobo is a AMD 761 northbridge with VIA 686B southbridge, which is the very work of Satan.

I think I'm going to reinstall as this is now really getting on my ****. Would you recommend installing Win2k with cards not present or with them all there?

Ta,

Nick.

chiark

One reinstall later and everything's working wonderfully. It had gradually become knackered...