• Warning: Computers are fragile. Especially within warranty period probably the smartest thing to do is to let the dealer take care of things. However when you are in a hurry or in the bush.... Follow these rules and use good common sense.  Only open the box after disconnecting the mains. Use antistatic wrist collar or, if you do not have that, make a firm grip to metal parts of the PC to equalize any static charge that you may have on your body. this is very important. All computer parts are very sensitive to static discharge!! (the trouble is that if a component gets damaged often you do not see that right away... it may take weeks before there is real effect that you may see in performance, or some memory fails after some time, or your machine hangs after warming up etc. Very tricky)
  • There are 3 sets of resources that need to be known about hardware. They are: The IRQ (Interrupt Request), DMA (Direct Memory Access port), and Memory location. You can't effectively troubleshoot your system without knowing these things about every piece of hardware. "Well, how do I get that information?" you might ask. Well, remember that little, tiny piece of paper that you threw away when you bought the modem? That's the piece of paper you need. Yes, I've done it myself some times.
  • Device Manager can help you to figure out what resources your hardware is taking. It may be wrong, however, if your hardware is not working properly, and you may need to open up your computer and look at the board.

  • If your hardware is Windows 2000 compatible AND if you have the proper driver there should not be any problem as long as the boards are in working order.  If you see an exclamation marc in the device manager please take out the device in question and see if this solves the problem. Then try to reinstall this device. If it fails again you'll have to see your computer supplier for something new...

  • IRQ's:
    There are 16 IRQ ports, numbered between 0 and 15. Back during the 8088 and 8086 (even before the 286's) days, there were only 8. Starting with 286's, more were needed though. There was no way to just add 7 more, so they had to attach one of the 7 extra ports onto one of the existing ports. Because of this, IRQ's 2 and 9 are linked together. Video cards are sometimes placed on IRQ 2, so anything put onto IRQ 9 may conflict with a video card. Below is a list of IRQ's, and what may be defaulted to them:

    IRQ 0 System Timer
    IRQ 1 Standard keyboard
    IRQ 2 Cascade to IRQ 9 avoid if possible (Video Card)
    IRQ 3 Com 2 or 4 (mouse) or (modem)
    IRQ 4 Com 1 or 3 (mouse) or (modem)
    IRQ 5 Sound Card or LPT2 or NIC (network interface card)
    IRQ 6 Floppy drive
    IRQ 7 LPT1 (Printer)
    IRQ 8 System cmos/realtime clock
    IRQ 9 Possible cascade may not be available
    IRQ 10 generally available
    IRQ 11 Shared by Video, NiC, PCI etc.
    IRQ 12 Motherboard PS/2 port (build-in mouse port etc)
    IRQ 13 Coprocessor (even if this is integrated)
    IRQ 14 Primary IDE channel
    IRQ 15 Secondary IDE channel

     

  • Remember that if you use a non- plug & play pcb you'll have to claim the interrupt from the BIOS so it will not be available anymore for the PCI-pool. Usually the interrupts that are in the PCI pool are distributed during startup. If you set some interrupt (let's say 10 for some weird network device I once knew) to ICA than that interrupt line will be kept aside just for that board.   
  • In Windows, PCI devices can share IRQs by design. Per the Plug and Play (PnP) capability that the PCI specification defines, the computer's BIOS configures adapters, which the Operating System then examines and changes if necessary. PCI devices typically share IRQs, especially on Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) computers with Windows ACPI support enabled.

    The PCI slot that's in use can sometimes cause problems. In the event of a freeze, try moving something (e.g., the sound card) to a different PCI slot.

     

  • DMA and Memory areas are not so easily defined. Most items that need DMA channels will look at the system and choose one that's free. The most likely candidates for conflicts are IRQ's and Memory Addresses. There are far too many Memory Addresses to catalog, so the easiest thing to do is just try every memory address a card has to find an open one.       
  • Go into Safe Mode. Click START, SETTINGS, CONTROL PANEL. Double-click the SYSTEM icon. Click on the PERFORMANCE tab at the top. Choose the FILE SYSTEM tab at the bottom, then TROUBLESHOOTING. Check every item in troubleshooting, then restart the system and see if it'll go into normal mode.

    If that works, uncheck one item at a time and restart the system until it locks up again.

    If that doesn't work, the tough one comes next. Go ahead and uncheck all items, then in the SYSTEM icon again, go to DEVICE MANAGER. Disable every device in DEVICE MANAGER except what's under SYSTEM DEVICES. Yes, I know it'll be a pain, but the best way is to disable every device. Once you do that, reset the machine and try to go into normal mode. If this works, you've got a driver that may need to be updated. Re-enable the devices by "area". For instance, re-enable all the ports then restart. Once you've narrowed down the device giving problems, contact the manufacturer and see if they have updated drivers. 

  • If your system won't go into Safe Mode, open up your computer and start removing devices, one at a time. You cannot remove the video card, hard drive and floppy drive controllers, or all of the RAM unless you have some replacement for it so prepare yourself before you start. Watch those static charges!

    To get drivers go to the site of the hardware manufacturer, try Microsoft or go to : 

    The manufacturers website

    Driver guide

    Windrivers.com (very good but they charge membership fee nowadays (yag)) 

    Or CNet.