System specs:

Pentium III 550E @840Mhz (5.5x152)
GigaByte 6VX-4XMB
256M PC133 Micron SDRAM
Asus V6800 Deluxe Video Card AGP
SB Live!Platnium
3Com 905TX-C NIC
Promise FastTrak 66 RAID controller PCI
Sigma Designs Hollywood Plus DVD Decoder PCI
Acer8432A CDRW
2 Maxtor 30G 7200RPM drives striped on the RAID controller
Pioneer 10X DVD drive

OK, here's the problem. Under a clean install of Pro, I get to the "desktop" portion of the install, and suddenly the computer seems to start "stuttering", as if something is using a huge amount of CPU power. The installation completes, albeit very slowly, and the computer reboots. Everything boots normally, until it gets to the point where it gives you the "Preparing Network Connections", and then the stuttering begins again. Once I log on and bring up the system monitor, I see a cycle of CPU using going from 0-100% over about a 5 second period.

If I go to Device Manager, I find that all my PCI cards are using IRQ 9. I've tried rearranging them around, but nothing works. I've got it traced to the NIC and sound card, I think. If I pull one of them out, the system runs great. But it stutters with both cards in.

I even tried to set specific IRQ's for each slot in the BIOS, but this BIOS only gives me the option to set an IRQ as PCI or ISA, which is kinda weird, I think.....

I have tried to install with only the NIC and video card in the system, and then adding the other cards one at a time. When I install the sound card, I get the stuttering again.....

Any ideas? I'm fresh out, and have just about resigned myself to having to run Win98 for the duration of this machine....

HELP!!!!

To the top...

According to Microsoft, Win2K lumps all plug&play compatible devices together on IRQ 9. No matter what you do in the BIOS or any where else will change this. (My machine runs everything on IRQ 9 too)(Microsoft Knowledge Base article Q252420)

My thought on your problem is this.. The 3C905 family of Nic's are all Bus-Mastering Nics. That may be what is causing your problem. My experience has been to put them in the first PCI slot (closest to the AGP)
You can also try another kind of Nic if you have access to one.

Luck!

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MjolnirGS@hotmail.com

Disable ACPI either in BIOS or Device Manager...

The switching of the NIC slot seems like a good idea; I'll give that a try.

But I thought W2K HAD to have ACPI enabled to function properly? Or is this just yet another MS fairytale......lol

W2K does NOT require ACPI in order to run successfully. Any statements to the contrary are worthy of nothing more than hot grits down the pants...

DOH!!!! The butter burns, oh it burns......

Well, I'll give it atry, and see what happens. Whatever the result is, I'll let you guys know!

Thanks for the help, guys!