[SoulNothing]

I recently switched my audigy to another pci slot because windows stopped reading in its old slot, the audigy is a gateway oem audigy (btw what does oem stand for), anyway i went to boot up it freezes on the firewire port on the card, tried failsafe, and all other methods, same problem. So um i thought id try reinstall it the version is mandrake 10 official edition, it freezes on install oddly enough at that firewire port, okay tried redhat same problem, ark same problem, fedora, knoppix, morphix, system rescue cd, suse, beernix, devian, gnoppix, all with the reoccuring problem, now being a big audio person i like to have a good card for playing games with in xp, and worked before in linux, do i need a new audigy or what

some sidenotes

when switched stopped reading flashdrives
firewire port came up in my computer never seen before
more memory used in windows

sys specs

amd atholon cp 2600+
512 pc2700 184 pin ddr ram
120 gb dma hard drive
cd rw
dvd
nvidia 5200 plus
audigy

so i was wondering is there anyway to fix this audigy issue or do i need to get a new one.

last note it freezes on oh1394 which i traced back under windows to the audigy firewire port

thanks in advance

[martouf]

umm .. windows doesn't stop "reading in its old slot" unless the hardware is farked.
BTW, "oem" means original equipment manufacturer. Plainly spoken, it means a card supplied
by a manufacturer but without brand markings so that it can be resold or "rebadged".
In some cases, it's a special version of a card made specifically for a system vendor.

Windows could possibly develop a driver problem which looks like farked hardware,
and in that case using Device Manager
( Start -> Run -> "devmgmt.msc" ) or (Control Panel -> System -> Hardware -> Device Manager)
and "uninstalling" the card and rebooting will effect a driver reinstallation.

Does the system run OK without the card?
Are you being very careful to take all static discharge control precautions
as you work on the system's guts?
Are you using the most recent Audigy drivers for windows?

[SoulNothing]

umm .. windows doesn't stop "reading in its old slot" unless the hardware is farked.
-i dont think the hardware is farked per se because i tested it on another system works fine and the computer is actually recognizing it unlike before, i know its odd but it just wont work for windows less its in either of two specific slots

Windows could possibly develop a driver problem which looks like farked hardware,
-im sorry dont get where your going with that i can say i have uninstalled and reinstalled the drivers at least twice in that section to check for claritey

Does the system run OK without the card?
-yeah it works fine with and without it i just like the audigy sound card
Are you being very careful to take all static discharge control precautions
-yes i used to have a static wristband but now i follow the other rules like touching the power box etc. i never dive right in, and if taking out i set in a anti static bag in a box of foam

Are you using the most recent Audigy drivers for windows?
- i check for driver updates once a week currently i have the most up to date i dont think that windows drivers would affect linux though, i will say this though when i bought the card it didnt come with a cd, so i downloaded a iso image of the software that it comes with plus drivers, first i get the oem drivers install, then iso image, then the stuff from creatives site this is for windows, under linux it always picked up just fine unlike in windows, there is no audigy card please reset the pci slots, etc. so now i got it all working cept under linux

[danleff]

If you have another available slot, try that. Stay away from the PCI slot directly next to any ISA or AGP slot. Some motherboards share resources between the ISA and the adjacent PCI slot and these issues are not uncommon when next to the AGP slot on the motherboard. So what you are probably experiencing is a resource conflict.

OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) problems are also an issue with these cards. As martouf noted, often they are made for OEM motherboards made for Gateway or Dell systems to work specifically with that boards configuration.

[SoulNothing]

the card is oem gateway

the slots are like this

agp nvidia 5200 plus
pci
pci modem
pci audigy

but ill try switching the slots thanks

[martouf]

ok.. based on your responses, the card is OK and the system is OK and the way you're working
on the problem won't create new problems.

I was interested in you having the most recent Windows drivers in order to fully test
the card in Windows (aka 'a functioning lash-up') to establish both the system and the
card are working well together.

When trying to get Windows to untangle its own self-made driver mess (which can mimic dead hardware)
you may need to not only uninstall the driver but also shut down, remove the problem card,
reboot without the card, shut down again (stoopid Windows!), install the card once again,
and finally reboot.

Ugly, but Windows does not yet have good hardware configuration management built in.

As for OEM cards: they are sometimes custom jobs almost-but-not-quite the same
as the 'consumer' version and as a result need the custom driver only available from where you
got the card (not the card designers website).

[SoulNothing]

i got the gateway drivers but it said incompatible a couple of times until i switched slots the card has always been an interesting thing

[martouf]

thanks for hanging in there with this ... so, what's the situation now?

Working OK in Windows, or no?

[SoulNothing]

hanging in no thanks for helping my next thought was buying another card

i may have not made it clear enough
windows is fine
linux is a problem

my system looks like this with the o/s
win2k pro
winxp
mandrake 10.0 oe

i was going to try to install another version of linux but it hangs at the cards firewire port

i think the issue goes to the cards firewire port
because now windows cant detect usb flash drives
and linux wont work i was lucky i found an old copy of morphix and told it not it to look at the card and it booted fine

on one hand i dont want to lose the card but on the other i want to use linux again
any suggestions would be appreciated

ill go over the driver situation i layered them
1st gatewy oem drivers accepted perfectly
2nd install the cd of software and drivers that i got off the net, thank god it recognized it
3rd get all the drivers and struff from creatives site.
(interestingly if uninstalled one thing the whole thing would just die, not work)

i dont think that the windows issue has anything to do with linux because i kept them seperated

hard drive is like this
59.9 gb ntfs xp for games and stuff
19.8gb fat32 2kpro office work and for parents who need to use the comp
40 gb linux extended i dont the exact schematics memorized but it aint just one thing i let it auto allocate

i know i answered all over the place but im just posting what i can think of

[martouf]

.. but it doesn't sound like everything is really fine in Windows. If you're having USB
problems or a mysteriously appearing firewire port, then things are not yet really "fine".

As you've said, you've tested the Audigy card in another system and there it really is OK, yes?

Does your Athlon system have onboard Firewire and/or audio?

The SB Audigy card has been well supported since early in the 2.4 kernel series
via the EMU10K1 driver, so Mandrake 10 ought to detect it and configure it
automagically.

Yes, the Windows issue(s) technically don't have anything to do with the linux boot hang,
except for the fact it's the same hardware in both cases. And I'm not yet convinced
there isn't some sort of underlying hardware problem like IRQ assignments.

Hmm... many of the article I'm finding via google talk about having IRQ issues
and also the Audigy Firewire port not behaving well. But about the same number
of articles are written by people who report no problems with it at all.

This Red Hat thread may help. Not sure, though.

This other Fedora thread looks more like your problem report.

[SoulNothing]

i guess that things arent 100% good in windows but it gets me through

i downloaded slackware 10 because it said it had a expirimental 2.6 kernel and tried it low and behold it worked all i had to type at cd boot was

bare.i 'noieee1394'
so this traces back my problem to the audigy

you asked about ports and stuff
i have an nforce2chipset
6usb ports
2 firewire (3 with audigy)
onboard audio but isnt good compared to the audigy but i can sacrifice the audigy i just dont have any place to work on my pc at the time

about acting okay ill say it like this it worked fine like it did when i first put it in my current system im sure it woulda degraded over time though

i think now i either have to reconfigure linux boot
or get rid of the audigy
based on i use onboard networking to get on i need a 2.6 kernel at least any suggestions for the linux distro would be appreciated

[martouf]

In general, if hardware is flakey in Windows, you can't expect it to be much
better with Linux. There are exceptions, of course. Windows stupidity can cause
flakiness which vanishes with Linux. The point being, if you have an honest-to-goodness
hardware problem, there's no software/operating_system which can fix it.

Yes, it appears now confirmed the firewire port on the Audigy card is the source
of the problem(s).

Since you have other firewire ports, there's no loss to disabling the Audigy firewire
port, just gain.

Your options are to configure the Audigy card itself to disable that problematic
firewire port (if that's at all possible), or to read through the threads I indicated
very carefully to learn how to edit your system's pcimap so that no firewire driver
is loaded for the Audigy port even though the port is detected.

The problem is not in the list of things which can be solved by switching to another distro.
You have a serious but not impossible to overcome hardware problem.

[SoulNothing]

i decided im just going to remove my audigy when i get the cash ill get an audigy 2

im just going to go with it from there thanks alot martouf

[SoulNothing]

all right i finally got a chance to take out the audigy low and behold that isnt the problem it isnt that at all but themobo im going to try to boot fedora 2 soon see what i get

[martouf]

you mean, without the Audigy card you're still getting the same kind of apparent
firewire port symptoms?

can you disable the onboard firewire ports in the BIOS?

you realize the chances of running any OS or any distro with your problematic hardware
are rapidly diminishing?

[SoulNothing]

let me put it this way i tried booting up slackware no go fedora 2 no go mandrake 10 oe no go gentoo no go okay ill let i think 2 days nothing except a new hole in the desk

anyway i dont think you know of my systems rare and odd disability with linux

im lucky to keep a distro for a month at a time, sometimes id just boot up and it would say no operating system found so i had to resetup xp so many times ive worn out the activation code 2 actually and the system wont except linux so i tried my laptop there are no perhipheals that work on it, so i asked my dad if he had any spare pcs low and behold im going to get a old 133mhz penitum one 128 mb ram 4mb video computer for liux
although im reading about linux+ certification im going to need to find a distro i told my dad linux aint goingon there itll just be xp and on this relic ill have to use linux the bios are like tight i can barelyt alter anything ill doublecheck though but ill think ill stick with the relix and ill squezze as much out of it as i can

[martouf]

Has anyone noticed SoulNothing's "Posts:" counter is stuck at 191?

SoulNothing - has anyone with medical training ever told you your speech/typing
seems pressured? Have your friends ever told you that you seem hyper?

Unless you're the unluckiest person alive, you need to start off with a system
which has been assembled and tested by a professional so that you may be assured
whichever OS or distro you load will run reliably. The symptoms you have described
can be caused by hardware, software or operator - or by some combination of all three.

May I suggest you purchase one of the under $800 "Education Workstation" systems
from Monarch Computer?

Don't get an Athlon 64, for goodness sake! Buy/think uncomplicated and nowhere
near the leading/bleeding technologic edge.

The "Monarch 2400+" for $370 looks like a good place to start -
heck, have them preload the distro of your choice, too.

[danleff]

SoulNothing, just be aware, if you use the 122 mhz system to carefully choose your distro. Mandrake 10 and Fedora have specific hardware requirements to run and install correctly.

Some may disagree, but be aware of some issue, such as Mandrake wanting to install in text mode only. Before trying a distro out, check on the requirements first, so you know what to expect.

Also, if the box has been sitting in a closet for some time, expect some other issues, such as a dead cmos battery. Easily fixed.

You may also find KDE dead slow. You may want to choose IceWM as a desktop environemnt. Dapper Dan uses it all the time. Much less system intensive.

There are a variety of cheap computers that can be had with a pre-installed Linux environment. Even WalMart is selling some with Mandrake or Linspire installed, for $299 and up.

I know...you may not have the cash. But with your investment in Linux, and willingness to tinker, you may want to save up and get your own reasonable box. It will be worth it!

[SoulNothing]

thanks for the advice danleff its not really in the closet per se but it was on a disk has been used like once a month

luckily though i got my cursed machine to run without the firewire but now i need to figure out where my linux discs went im thinking ill try command line with the older one and on the one i have now an gui thanks for the help

[SoulNothing]

after a night of installing and reinstalling xp, slackware, mepis, and fedora core 2, im back to square one i was never able to configure the bootloader correctly

with fedora when i installed it to the mbr it messed up linux with the issue of ntldr missing my common error i found with a mess up in xp

so i have fedora installed but it botos straight to xp no boot loader

im have a test for college admittance tommorow so i have to go to bed

but i plan to install mepis and slackware as well i just need to configure the bootloader im unsure as which to go to lilo or grub i
just want to be able to boot xp as well in case this helps my hard drive is like this

15 gig mepis 2004 rc2 dev/hda1 EXT3
60 gig xp dev/hda2 H: NTFS
35 gig fedora core 2 dev/hda3 EXT3
9 gig slackware Dev/hda4 EXT3
5 gig unusable/hidden
this is how i had it but then it messed up its going back to this though i just need to configure the bootloader any lins/help would appreciated again i dont cared what it is lilo or grub
also i can change the file system as well

thanks in advance for the help and good night