Safe Mode bootup after installing NIC

In that case, it is very possible that the problem is with the PSU. That is a
fairly large load for a 200-W PSU. As Franc mentioned on this subject, an easy way
to test that is to unplug the power and data cables from some of the drives...in
this case, disconnect one of the CD drives and the zip drive...and perhaps remove
the TV tuner card, then insert the NIC, start the machine, and load the drivers.
Run like this for a couple of days and see if the problem still exists....if not,
then it is most likely a matter of needing a larger PSU (although it could also
indicate a conflict with the tuner card if that is a component you remove).
--
Glen Ventura, MS MVP Shell/User, A+
http://dts-l.org/goodpost.htm


wrote in message
ups.com...

glee wrote:
I ran your problem by some other MVPs and one of them made the astute
observation
that your system is "obviously rather aged" and may have had an underpowered
Power
Supply Unit (PSU), with the addition of a NIC (any NIC) being the straw that
breaks
the camel's back.

My power supply is 200 watts. I don't know about the power draw of the
other devices. All I can say is that I have 2 Hard Drives, 2 CD
Drives, a Zip Drive, a modem, TV tuner card, Promise IDE card, PCI
video card, and now a NIC.

wrote in message
ups.com...

glee wrote:
I ran your problem by some other MVPs and one of them made the astute
observation
that your system is "obviously rather aged" and may have had an
underpowered Power
Supply Unit (PSU), with the addition of a NIC (any NIC) being the straw
that breaks
the camel's back.

My power supply is 200 watts. I don't know about the power draw of the
other devices. All I can say is that I have 2 Hard Drives, 2 CD
Drives, a Zip Drive, a modem, TV tuner card, Promise IDE card, PCI
video card, and now a NIC.

You are seriously underpowered.

Have a look at this old thread to see why.

http://groups.google.com/groups?as_u...GP10.phx .gbl





--
====================
Top Articles for Windows 98
http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;187602

On 9 Oct 2005 14:10:19 -0700, put finger to
keyboard and composed:

Franc:
You wrote: If you supply enough information, perhaps someone will see
the solution. At this point you haven't really given us much to work
with.

The motherboard is an Intel AN430TX . As I said in my initial post,
the PC is quite old -- 8 years, in fact.
What other information would you like?

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Servic es\VxD\DHCP\DhcpInfo00
winipcfg
NIC resource list (IRQ, DMA, IO range, memory range)
Control Panel - Network - Configuration
reboot in logged mode (bootlog.txt)
reboot in safe mode without networking (win /d:m)
reboot in safe mode with networking (win /d:n)
exclude adapter memory area (win /d:x)

-- Franc Zabkar

Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.

On 9 Oct 2005 14:38:05 -0700, put finger to
keyboard and composed:


Franc Zabkar wrote:
Do you mean that Windows completed booting normally, albeit with a
long delay? And do you mean that, after booting normally, you then
connected the modem, and Windows spontaneously rebooted itself into
Safe Mode?

Yes, spontaneously.

It appears that the system falls over as soon as the modem sends data
to the NIC. I wonder if there is an undetected IRQ conflict, or
perhaps the NIC is attempting to share reserved system memory.

I notice that page 47 of your motherboard manual lists several
reserved memory areas below 1MB:

ftp://download.intel.com/support/mot...x/28295501.pdf

Perhaps the NIC's memory address range is in conflict with a critical
system area. What are the NIC's resources, ie IRQ, DMA, IO range,
memory range?

If you do have a memory conflict, then booting to a command prompt and
typing "win /d:x" may help confirm it.

WIN [/D:[F][M][S][V][X]]

/D Used for troubleshooting when Windows does not start correctly.

:X Excludes all of the adapter area from the range of memory
that Windows scans to find unused space. Equivalent to
SYSTEM.INI file setting: EMMExclude=A000-FFFF.

But the next manual reboot, with modem attached would also put me in
Safe Mode. Once I get the first Safe Mode boot, I can't go back to any
other type of bootup, hanging or not, without uninstalling the NIC.

Clearly something has changed in your system after the first safe mode
reboot. The only thing I can think of is that some data have been
written to the registry. I doubt that any other files would have been
touched.

AFAICS, the following registry key records the results of the last
successful DHCP renewal, ie the last time your NIC obtained an IP
address from a DHCP server:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Servic es\VxD\DHCP\DhcpInfo00

Among other things it shows your last IP address, the address of the
DHCP server, and your NIC's physical (MAC) address.

To see these for yourself, go to Start - Run and type regedit.exe.
Then navigate to the above key, highlight it, and select Registry -
Export registry file. Choose "selected branch" for the "export range"
and Save it to a .reg file. If you include this file's contents in
your next post, perhaps someone can see what is happening.

FWIW, here's my theory. I suspect that a fresh install resets all the
parameters at the above key and allows the system to boot normally ...
as long as the modem is not connected. Otherwise I suspect that if
these parameters have a prior history, then Windows attempts to
confirm them by communicating with the NIC, whether or not the modem
is attached, and that this then precipitates a serious system error
necessitating a safe mode reboot. This process is repeated at every
subsequent reboot until the above parameters are reset, either by a
reinstallation, or by a manual edit of the registry. You could test
this hypothesis by reinstalling the NIC and taking a snapshot of the
entire registry before you connect the modem. Then take another
snapshot after connecting the modem and compare the two results.

This post describes how to detect the changes:
http://groups.google.com/group/micro...e=source&hl=en

Alternatively, here is a tool that others recommend:
http://www.regview.com/regview/

If you do find that the above registry key is a symptom of your
problem, then you could probably export the contents of a "good"
registry key to a small .reg file, and then import it back into the
registry when the safe mode problem reappears. This will not
immediately solve your problem but will at least confirm what is
happening.

Franc wrote
I can't think of any insurmountable reason why a NIC, whether ISA or
PCI, should not function in your system.

What if the NIC requires a version of PCI that my old PC does not have?
Would that be an insurmountable reason? My motherboard is supposed
to be PCI 2.1 compliant, but who knows for sure? Maybe the NIC thinks
it isn't.

It appears that there *are* some missing PCI features. I have no idea
whether they are significant, though. In any case your ISA card would
be unaffected by them.

See
ftp://download.intel.com/support/mot...x/67430116.PDF

3. PCI 2.1 Specification Optional Features

The following optional features in the PCI 2.1 Specification are not
implemented on the AN430TX motherboard:

• Cache Support Pins SBO# and SDONE (Section 2.2.7)
• PRSNTx# (Section 2.2.8)
• CLKRUN# (Section 2.2.8)
• 64 Bit Bus Extension Pins (Section 2.2.9)
• 66 MHz support (Section 2.2.8)
• JTAG/Boundary scan (Section 2.2.10)

-- Franc Zabkar

Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.

Franc:

I seem to have solved the problem! Let me tell you what I just did:
I simply removed the modem and installed the NIC and its driver and
rebooted. It was a normal boot without Safe Mode.

Then I discovered something which I had evidently missed before. I
took your suggestion and ran msinfo32.exe and discovered that THERE
WERE NO IRQ's LEFT ON MY PC. Thus, when I had originally installed the
NIC with the modem already installed, there wasn't a free IRQ to assign
it to. THAT'S WHY I GOT THE SAFE MODE BOOT UP! The NIC evidently
needed its own IRQ in order to work correctly and simply didn't have
one.

Question: Someone on another forum just told me that shared IRQ's
usually are not a problem. As a matter of fact, I noticed several
instances of shared IRQs on my system, such as the TV card sharing
irq11 with the usb host adapter. But I always thought that each
device was supposed to have only one IRQ associated with it. That is
obviously the case with my modem and NIC because the problem was only
solved when I removed the modem. Or perhaps it was another resource
conflict, like DMA channel or IO Port, that was causing the problem?
Thank You.

Some devices will share IRQs happily, others will not. Apparently your
network card will not. The card must be designed to share IRQs in order to
be able to do so.

--
Richard G. Harper [MVP Shell/User]
* PLEASE post all messages and replies in the newsgroups
* for the benefit of all. Private mail is usually not replied to.
* My website, such as it is ... http://rgharper.mvps.org/
* HELP us help YOU ... http://www.dts-l.org/goodpost.htm


wrote in message
ups.com...
Franc:

I seem to have solved the problem! Let me tell you what I just did:
I simply removed the modem and installed the NIC and its driver and
rebooted. It was a normal boot without Safe Mode.

Then I discovered something which I had evidently missed before. I
took your suggestion and ran msinfo32.exe and discovered that THERE
WERE NO IRQ's LEFT ON MY PC. Thus, when I had originally installed the
NIC with the modem already installed, there wasn't a free IRQ to assign
it to. THAT'S WHY I GOT THE SAFE MODE BOOT UP! The NIC evidently
needed its own IRQ in order to work correctly and simply didn't have
one.

Question: Someone on another forum just told me that shared IRQ's
usually are not a problem. As a matter of fact, I noticed several
instances of shared IRQs on my system, such as the TV card sharing
irq11 with the usb host adapter. But I always thought that each
device was supposed to have only one IRQ associated with it. That is
obviously the case with my modem and NIC because the problem was only
solved when I removed the modem. Or perhaps it was another resource
conflict, like DMA channel or IO Port, that was causing the problem?
Thank You.

When you check for Resource Conflicts in Device Manager, is it
necessary to be in Safe Mode?
If so, why?

Just the opposite. You want a Normal startup to look for conflicts.

--
Gary S. Terhune
MS MVP Shell/User

wrote in message
ups.com...
When you check for Resource Conflicts in Device Manager, is it
necessary to be in Safe Mode?
If so, why?

Gary S. Terhune wrote:
Just the opposite. You want a Normal startup to look for conflicts.


Immediately after I installed the NIC that was conflicting with my
installed modem, I rebooted and got that long "hanging" boot that I
described above. But when I got to the desktop and went to Device
Manager, I did not see any ! icons next to either the NIC or the modem.
Do you have any idea why that would be? That's what confuses me the
most, now that I have identified the problem as a resource allocation
problem and resolved it.

On 10 Oct 2005 13:01:12 -0700, put finger to
keyboard and composed:

Franc:

I seem to have solved the problem! Let me tell you what I just did:
I simply removed the modem and installed the NIC and its driver and
rebooted. It was a normal boot without Safe Mode.

Then I discovered something which I had evidently missed before. I
took your suggestion and ran msinfo32.exe and discovered that THERE
WERE NO IRQ's LEFT ON MY PC. Thus, when I had originally installed the
NIC with the modem already installed, there wasn't a free IRQ to assign
it to.

Well, I guess that bears out what was stated almost from the outset,
namely that you had an undetected resource conflict. In hindsight you
could have saved yourself a lot of trouble had you posted the resource
list.

THAT'S WHY I GOT THE SAFE MODE BOOT UP! The NIC evidently
needed its own IRQ in order to work correctly and simply didn't have
one.

I suspect that you had two situations where an ISA device was
competing for the same IRQ as a PCI device. Initially it was a PCI NIC
and some ISA device on your motherboard or in a slot, then it was an
ISA NIC and some existing PCI device.

In my system I occasionally have problems when my onboard sound (an
ISA device) finds itself sharing an IRQ with an onboard PCI device.
Win98SE's Device Manager identifies the sharing but does not flag it
as a problem. Unfortunately this configuration causes the sound to
stutter and repeat continuously.

I work around the problem by assigning a fixed IRQ to the soundcard
via DM, and I reserve the same IRQ for ISA devices in the BIOS setup.
I can also change the PCI INTA/B/C/D priority in the BIOS if need be.

Question: Someone on another forum just told me that shared IRQ's
usually are not a problem.

PCI devices can share IRQs as long as IRQ Steering is enabled. My
plug-in PCI NIC shares one IRQ with the onboard USB controller and the
onboard graphics. ISA devices are another matter, though. Generally
they don't like to share unless they coexist on the same card.

As a matter of fact, I noticed several
instances of shared IRQs on my system, such as the TV card sharing
irq11 with the usb host adapter. But I always thought that each
device was supposed to have only one IRQ associated with it.

They are probably both PCI devices.

That is
obviously the case with my modem and NIC because the problem was only
solved when I removed the modem. Or perhaps it was another resource
conflict, like DMA channel or IO Port, that was causing the problem?
Thank You.

I presume you are referring to your internal dial-up modem, not the
DSL modem. If this is an ISA "hardware" non-PnP modem, then it would
most likely have occupied IRQ 3 or IRQ 4 and would have appeared as a
standard COM port in DM.

In any case, just because you solved your problem by removing your
modem doesn't prove that your modem was the culprit. The nature of PnP
is such that resources are shuffled about like musical chairs whenever
the device list changes. It could be that the actual problem device is
now occupying an IRQ vacated by your modem.

-- Franc Zabkar

Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.