How can I get my PCI based sound card to work under Windows 2000?

A. There are currently problems in 2000 with PCI based sound cards,including the Creative PCI 64 and Creative PCI 128 however it is possible touse the NT 4.0 drivers after making a small change to your system.

The problem is that Windows 2000 uses IRQ steering by default. PCI bus IRQsteering gives Windows 2000 the flexibility to reprogram PCI interrupts whenrebalancing Plug and Play PCI and ISA resources around non-Plug and Play ISAdevices.

Without IRQ Steering Windows 2000 cannot rebalance PCI and ISA IRQs for Plugand Play devices around non-Plug and Play ISA devices to solve resourceconflicts. For example, if your computer's BIOS is unaware of non-Plug and PlayISA cards, the operating system does not have PCI bus IRQ steering, and theBIOS has set a PCI device to IRQ 10, you may have a resource conflict when youadd a non-Plug and Play ISA device that is configured for IRQ 10. However, withPCI bus IRQ steering the operating system can resolve this IRQ resourceconflict.

To do so, the operating system:

To disable IRQ Steering perform the following:

Once the machine has restarted you should be able to install your NT 4.0 PCIsound drivers (make sure you get the new drivers from the sound card makerswebsite).

If you do not have a Standard PC, you must disable ACPI BIOS detection asfollows:

An alternative to the reinstall is to open the Device Manager (right click onMy Computer, select Properties and select 'Device Manager'), open the Computer,double click on the system type shown (for example MPS PC), go to driver tab.Click on update driver. Choose display a list of drivers. Choose Show allhardware of this device class. Choose Standard PC.

Now you can change the IRQ steering option. Reboot and install the propersound card driver.