Installing a PCI card removes access to the Hard Drive

[neil2602]

I am upgrading an old PC as part of my wireless network, and recently tried to install a D-Link DWL-520+ PCI card. I firstly upgraded from Win95 to Win98 (required) and then installed the PCI card as instructed. On booting up I received the message - "Primary master hard disk fail". If I remove the card the machine boots up OK.

I have tried all of the available PCI slots. There does seem to be a hardware conflict (pre-existing) with the sound card and the hard drive which is visible when I boot up normally. I have tried the confict resolution software that comes with Windows but the system just hangs.


On installing Win98 I re-formatted the hard drive without any problems.

thanks for reading this!
Neil

 

[wolluf]

Have you tried hard drive on secondary IDE connector?

 

[lgebhart]

Explain how you know there is a conflict between sound card and hard drive. Hard drive on IDE1 or IDE2 uses IRQ 14 and 15 respectively and I have never seen a conflict between the two even an old sound card that might use IRQ's 5, 7, and 10. The soundcard could be your problem though, take your sound card out and see if it boots.

The older sound cards did use up to 3 IRQ's for the different features and many of the newer ones don't. Some of the cheaper sound cards even to this day will use more than one IRQ so my advice would be a Soundblaster 16 for an older machine. The newer parts seem to share IRQ's much better than the older components.

Good Luck!



ggebhart@clover.net
I hope I never get too old or arrogant to learn something new!

 

[wizzard2k2]

You also might want to include what mobo you have, etc...
VIA had a real problem with PCI steering unless you had their 4in1 drivers installed

 

[neil2602]

Thanks! I've removed the soundcard and all is well with the wireless link. It's working perfectly! Not sure how or whether I should re-introduce the sound-card.

In terms of the question re how I knew there was a conflict it was listed with an exclamation mark in Device Manager and I'm sure IRQ 14 was being used for one of the components of the sound / game card. I can't remember how many IRQs were being used but it was certainly more than one.

Thanks again!