# How to change the IRQ for the sound card? Conflict!



## Tannhäuser (Dec 9, 2011)

Hello,

as some of you may already know, there are MANY problems when using a Creative Sound Card with newer ASUS boards. Now I have a serious one: My Sound Blaster X-Fi Music wants to be friends with IRQ 13 - but that IRQ ist already occupied by "Numeric CoProcessor". Result: No sound. And if I try to deactivate the card in the devices panel, the system crashes with a bluescreen. 

That card has been working before. Same system. Same parts. Same OS. One day I tried out another keyboard, plugged some USB-devices in and out. That led to a new arrangement of the IRQs, as it seems. 

I already tried a lot to get it running again. Pulled all of the USB-devices, tried alternative drivers (Pax), deactivated other devices in Win7, such as the DVD-drive and other devices that would be dispensable. Pulled out the sound card of course, too. But nothing was helpful - it still remains sucking on IRQ13. Another Slot on the board? Not possible, coz the tube from the watercooling is in the way, leading to the outside. 

So, I'd be thankful for any advice you can give. 

Greetings
Tannhäuser


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## CJCerny (Dec 9, 2011)

Sounds like you don't have the "Plug And Play OS?" option enabled in your BIOS. I've never seen an OS/mobo choose the same IRQ for two different devices unless that option is disabled.


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## Tannhäuser (Dec 9, 2011)

CJCerny said:


> Sounds like you don't have the "Plug And Play OS?" option enabled in your BIOS. I've never seen an OS/mobo choose the same IRQ for two different devices unless that option is disabled.



There are many many threads out there with people, who are angry about their Creative-products. Especially when it comes to the combination of e.g. an ASUS P8P67 with those soundcards. As I'm at work right now, I can't asure that the PnP-Option is enabled in the BIOS. But I guess it's enabled. Will look after it. I never changed that setting and the card was running before. With a little problem: sound was crashing or resulted in sizzling noises until rebooting when plugging and unplugging the cable, that leads to the amplifier. That was not the case on my older ASUS-board, but at once on the P8P67.

So it's the combination of hardware, that leads into problems no one has ever seen before.


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## LAN_deRf_HA (Dec 9, 2011)

For 7 you have to really work at forcing it, uninstalling and reinstalling drivers/cards in certain orders and hoping you get the arrangement you want. You could also try changing the IRQ priority but I'm not sure it's been proven to do anything. http://helpdeskgeek.com/windows-vista-tips/manage-irq-settings-windows-vista-7/

I think 13 IRQ is pretty low priority; anything above 15 is virtual and they use either IRQ 8 or 9, so nearly everything is prioritized before 13.

I did the priority thing to fight static but it seems to have gone away once I stopped playing BF3. Like it was a catalyst or something. Never had an issue on boots where I hadn't launched that game.


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## Athlon2K15 (Dec 9, 2011)

does your bios have the option of clearing ESCD?


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## Mussels (Dec 9, 2011)

Tannhäuser said:


> As I'm at work right now, I can't asure that the PnP-Option is enabled in the BIOS. But I guess it's enabled. Will look after it.



if you ever hit 'load fail safe defaults' it often turns it off. 'optimised defaults' should enable it. (this is just a heads up in case you ever reset your BIOS to defaults)



if you set it to manual, you can assign the IRQ's manually via the BIOS i think. havent needed to mess around with IRQ's since windows 95, it baffles me how your system managed to get a conflict.


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## Tannhäuser (Dec 11, 2011)

Just to let you know: That damn Creative card sucks at IRQ 13 again and again. Tried everything. Reinstalled drivers, changed hardware, tried a new slot, put in new hardware (network card (Bigfoot Killer)) ... I could've reinstalled Win7 - but that's more than enough for me. Creative doesn't come around with the drivers, although MANY users have problems with their Sound Blasters on the newer boards. ... So I pulled that damn cheap piece of shit forever, preferring working onboard-sound for a while (doesn't really hurt, coz I'm reading a lot about the no-existing-advantages of soundcards) ... selling that piece of crap now or dumping it. Doesn't matter. 

Thanks for the help anyway.


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## 95Viper (Dec 11, 2011)

How to configure interrupt request (IRQ) priorities in Windows Vista and 7

Edit:

This is some info from MS about it, but it is from the Windows 2000 support.
Seems to be a real pain in the arse to get windows 7 to do any tricks.
I remember the old adding to the win.ini or system.ini files the SB info to change the irqs and such, however that was long ago.



> Manually assigning IRQs to PCI slots in the System BIOS as a troubleshooting method may work on some non-ACPI systems when using a standard PC HAL, but these settings are ignored by Plug and Play in Windows if ACPI support is enabled. If you need to manually assign IRQ addresses through the BIOS to a device on an ACPI motherboard, you will need to re-install Windows to force the installation to use a Standard PC HAL



The only other thing, I ran across, was person disabled the serial port, parallel port, floppy port, and every other port he was not using.  Re-booted and re-set the tables in the bios.  And, then  went into device manager and removed/deleted the ghosted items that corresponded to his efforts.  And, they stated it fixed their problem with the irqs.

The most you get from MS is... it is the device driver or bios problem... update your driver or check for updated bios.  



LAN_deRf_HA said:


> Scroll up.



I saw that and _it did not register_ at the time; as, I was doing about five different things.


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## LAN_deRf_HA (Dec 11, 2011)

95Viper said:


> How to configure interrupt request (IRQ) priorities in Windows Vista and 7



Scroll up.


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