G200 driver/IRQ problem

[kowie37]

I cannot get my Matrox Millenium G200 AGP to work with any new drivers. Here's what's happening:

The problem occurs when I choose the 'assign IRQ to Video' in the BIOS. I know this because the card works with an driver that does not require the IRQ (4.12). All of the newer Matrox drivers require the IRQ to be assigned and do not work.

Anyway, after I boot with the card in and new driver installed, I keep getting the 'new hardware' message from Win98. After you to the system properties you see the card with the yellow exclaimation point. The error is no Input/Output Resources available. If I try and assign them manually it won't let me.

My System: Abit LX6 motherboard, Award 4.51 bios, Pentium II 300, 128Ram.

Any help appreciated!

Mike Kowal

[motub]

When I had (well, still have, actually) a similar problem--no SB emulation on my Monster Sound MX300 because no IRQ available, Win98 Device Mgr. offered me a choice of devices that I could remove to free something up. Are you not getting that option?

Also, tedious as it is, can you rearrange or remove one or more PCI cards to see if you can get an IRQ free? Even just as a test to see if it'll work at all.

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Holly

Who can now put her V2 in her roomie's PC, because her own Soyo 5EMA, K6-2 333 not o/c, 256MB PC100 , Millennium G200 8MB SGRAM, Win98] works plenty good enough 'til she's saved the moolah for the G400/Athlon rig [drool, pant, drool...





[This message has been edited by motub (edited 07-15-99).]

[Joel]

The G200 does require an IRQ. You must have the CMOS setting on your motherboard,'assign IRQ to Video', enabled. When you first boot up Win98 should see it as a standard VGA PCI device and ask about loading drivers for it. Allow it to load the Win98 generic VGA. After it reboots then go into the directory where you have the G200 drivers and run the setup.exe file. One other thing to look at is to see if you might have a PCI card in the PCI slot right next to the AGP slot. If you do then move it. For some reason on most motherboards the two slots will share the same IRQ. If you still have problems please post again with more about your system specs and we'll see what we can do. Also look into the properties of the video card while in device manager and it should tell what is in conflict.

Joel

[Fat Tone]

Some motherboards share an IRQ between the AGP slot and the furthest PCI slot. Check this position also.

I have no problem sharing the IRQ with my TV tuner card - do you have the latest motherboard drivers?

Good Luck!

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Cheers, Tony.

System: K6-2-400 (@4.5*100, 2.4V), 128MB PC100, PcChips M577, 16Mb G200 Millenium (4.51,2.3, TV-out), Seagate 8.6Gig, SB PCI128, P821 (ALi M3309) DVD decoder, WinTV/PCI Tuner, CL 2x DVD, 36x CDROM, LS-120, Logicode 56K modem

[Fat Tone]

Some motherboards share an IRQ between the AGP slot and the furthest PCI slot. Check this position also.

I have no problem sharing the IRQ with my TV tuner card - do you have the latest motherboard drivers?

Good Luck!

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Cheers, Tony.

System: K6-2-400 (@4.5*100, 2.4V), 128MB PC100, PcChips M577, 16Mb G200 Millenium (4.51,2.3, TV-out), Seagate 8.6Gig, SB PCI128, P821 (ALi M3309) DVD decoder, WinTV/PCI Tuner, CL 2x DVD, 36x CDROM, LS-120, Logicode 56K modem

[kowie]

Based on some of the feedback here is some more info:

1. I have assigned the IRQ in the BIOS (not currently as it doesn't work then. That is the strange thing the 4.12 drivers allow the card to work without the IRQ assigned, any of of the newer drivers do not). Also when I say 'work' I mean that in 4.12 I can get 3D and use the drivers using any other set I get standard VGA only.

2. I don't have any PCI cards in the system only 3 ISAs. A 3com network card, a generic modem and a generic sound card. All of them say "In PnP mode". I tried ripping all the other cards out and just running the video but had the same problem.

3. Conflict: Under properties it says that it could not find any open I/O Resources. When you look at what it is conflicting with it is "Motherboard Resources" and "IRQ holder for PCI Steering".

4. It is something with my system/BIOS as I tried a Voodoo3 PCI card and had similar problems.

5. I have tried all of the recommended BIOS and setup/install procedures (edit registry, remove Matrox, etc.)

Any more help much appreciated!
Mike

[Maggi]

What are those 4.12 drivers you're talking about ?

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Cheerio,
Maggi

I used to have some posts in my record and hopefully some of the guys 'n' girls will still know me and my system ...

[box]

Have you tried looking in the device-manager, under the PCI-bus, to see if the IRQ-table is properly initialized? If not that's most likely part of your problem.

Also please note, that not assigning an IRQ to the G200, will render busmastering unusable.

[The PIT]

The problem I would say is with pci steering.
This can be a real bugger to sort out. The problem could be in the Bios have you tried an upgrade?
You could also try deleteing pci steering and getting windoze to re-install it.
The last time I came across this type of error the only way I solved was by killing windows completley and re-installing.

[anid]

I had a similar problem at one point. Sometimes when I would boot, or after I had the system shut down for a while, I would get a message saying there was a problem with my video hardware, with an exclamation in Device Manager. The system would also boot up in 8-bit color, 640X480. I would have to change the color depth to 16 bit and reboot, everything would usually be fine after that. This would also happen every time I changed the drivers. I finally found the problem - I had USB disabled in BIOS. Once I enabled that, the card has acted fine, and so has a few other things in the system that were quirky.

[billko]

Hey, guys:

I thought IRQ steering is what enables you to share IRQ's. It's not a device in itself.

Bill

[Guyver]

It's not a device per-say, but a method of interfacing with the system to provide the irq steering service. It usually provides about 4-6 methods of doing this. If I used the default methods with my EpOX MVP3G - Windows 98 would change the IRQ's assigned by the motherboard. I played around with which ones were activated (x'd) and which ones weren't, until I got it set so that the IRQ's in Windows 98 matched the BIOS parameters. You may need to do something like this yourself to get your IRQ's nailed down...

Go to control panel, system, device manager, system devices, then it's PCI Bus or something like that... Then there is a tab called PCI Steering - in there, there should be at least one, but probably more boxes for selecting the methods of IRQ steering. Play around with them until you find the one that works best for your configuration.

Hope this helps....

LB

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Running an ABIT BX6 R2, PIII-450 @ 581Mhz, 128MB (64x2) PC100SDRAM (running @ 129), Matrox Mystique G200 8MB, SBLive! Value, Adaptec AHA-2940UW (Dual Channel)
All kinds of other SCSI and ATAPI goodies....
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Waiting for my G400Max Impatiently, increasing system performance to give it a good home.....

[chuck]

kowie37,
Assuming you have not been living with this problem for months, what part of the system is new? Did you just get the G200 or motherboard?
A rough & ready thing to try befor re-installing your OS would be to boot to safe mode and then remove ALL the devices under SYSTEM in system properties. It may take 3 reboots before WIN98 re-detects everything but it can fix some preaty bad problems.
I have to do this whenever I change motherboards.
chuck

[kowie37]

Chuck, I'll give safe mode a try before I reinstall the OS. I did have a lot of problems with PnP and devices when I 'upgraded' to Win98 so I think you are all on to something...

To answer your question, I have lived with the original drivers the board came with and have been able to run my stuff. I tried newer drivers but always went back when they didn't work.

What has made me try and resolve this is that my wife wants to use Groupwise and there is a conflict with the video drivers and the program (when you try and sync with her office the screen gets lines and then the system reboots - it does not happen with the generic vga driver).

Thanks for all the suggestions...

[chuck]

Also, while you are in safe mode, check to see if you have multiple or old video cards in you registry.
I worked on a guys computer once who had been upgrading since win3.0 without ever starting from scratch. His registry and ini files were so whacked out it was a wonder any thing ran right on his machine. A re-install fixed everything right up.
good luck
chuck