install 1394 card-audio disappears

[Sevenpointone]

After building and install xp-pro,with recommended drivers,realtek97,nvidia media controllers,ect, all worded fine, Added pci-cards and more and the sound diappeared.
Spent hours trying to fix and the started from scratch.
On second round of adding stuff one at a time, 1394 basic pci card, self installing as a network controller, cause my audio to disappear.
No indicated driver conflicts, standard driver uninstalls/reintalls/disabling resolved issue.
Uninstalled and remove 1394 card and more uninstalls/reintalls/disabling has not helped.
I'm missing something, but what-has eluded me. May someones assistance to my problem would be appreciated
Thanks
7.1

 

[micker377]

Some motherboards "rank" the PCI IRQ's. AGP, PCI1, PCI2, etc. Try the audio in first slot next to the AGP. Put the NIC in the last slot.

 

[Sevenpointone]

Thank you for the reply which leds me to recognize what I left out. Its an ECS nForce 3a with on board audio,nic, but no video. I wanted a firewire port so thats when audio went dead,after I installed it.But heres where I am at.
XP Pro
AMD 3200
ECS nForce3A Socket 754
Kingstm Ram 512
For now a PNY NVidia 5200 ultra (APG)
Realtec97 w/ Soundman
I can change some irq's in device manager but not audio or PCI network contrtoller from IRQ22, which both are on. No bios setting either(Award)
I have no conflicts listed in sys. info or device mgr.
Presently I am checking this "Soundman" for problems.
I will shortly bypass the problem by adding a sound card, but thats the easy way out. I'm stumped and I gotta know!
Also in my research the last 24 hours , it seems that the APG and first PCI slot use the same IRQ, and therefore to use PCI slot 2 for audio.
Late
7.1

 

[felixc]

You can try installing the PCI cards at different locations. The interrupt lines for the PCI slots are different from slot to slot. You might find the right combination.

Also, if your are not using the serial and parallel ports, disabling them in the BIOS menus will free the associated Interrupt channels, and maybe assign them to your PCI cards.

Most USB controllers require more than one interrupt line. I don't know about the firewire ports, but if it needs more than one interrupt line, then the adjacent PCI card will not work if it needs an interrupt line, unless you are lucky and that the drivers do accept multiple IRQ sources.

 

[Sevenpointone]

Well just to finish this off, I bought an Abit motherboard and
naturally it installed just fine. I'm sure ECS has a different point of view, but I think the audio drivers were not executed properly, including two different ver. of Realtecs sound manager in Windows folder. The install Cd is a mess. I shoulda trusted me and not taken it as granted that they would get it right. Whats that verbage- "all parts are good these days" Well I prefer in this case, "the sum of the parts is greater than the whole" The whole stank. Even if they are giving them away (ECS motherboards),its way to expensive to be wasting time with stinky stuff like that board.

 

[felixc]

I have two ECS motherboards, on both of them I disabled the on-board audio and installed a Soundblaster card instead. Is it ECS or Realtek, or because of the chipset used on the motherboards? I prefered to bypass the problem, and get better audio anyway. Since then, no distortion and no software problems.