Several months ago I built a computer using an Abit KT-7 motherboard, an Athlon T-bird 900 Mz, nvida GEforce2 MX400, Philips 704 soundcard, 30 gb hard drive, DVD-ROM drive, and CD-ROM burner. OS was a new install of Windows98 SE. Everything worked fine except that the computer would freeze whenever Windows detected the gameport. I removed the Philips card and put in a new Soundblaster 16 that I had laying around. It did exactly the same thing.

Now I've bought a barebones system with an ECS K7S5A motherboard, Athlon XP1800+, with on-board sound, modem, and NIC card. I installed the same video and sound cards (Philips) that were in the 900 and all the drives.
It works perfectly except that it also freezes when it tries to install the gameport. Yes, I disabled the on-board sound and gameport in the BIOS. Also disabled one of the serial ports to free up resources.

Help!

Also, I'm using the latest Detonator drivers for the video card and downloaded the newest soundcard drivers from the Philips site. All Win98 SE updates have been done.

Some questions:

Does the on board sound card and game port work?

When you add the Philips card and disable the onboard, does Windows recognize and install the sound drivers, then crash when it detects the game port? Or does it just freeze when it detects the card?

Try setting the interrupt request for the sound card in Bios under PCI settings. It should give you a choice for each PCI slot on your motherboard, and most times it will also show you which interrupt req's are available. You can usually use 5 for a sound card, but if that doesn't work, try another one.

It locks up when it detects and tries to install the on-board gameport too.

When I install the Philips card Windows detects it and installs the drivers with no problem except for the gameport.

I'll try your suggestion about setting the IRQ in the BIOS. Thanks.

There's no provision in my BIOS for assigning IRQs to individual devices. Someone suggested that I change "Plug and Play Aware OS" from yes to no. I tried that but it didn't make a difference.

The manual for your motherboard shows the PCI configuration page to be in Bios under the category "PNP/PCI Configurations".

Your manual should tell you how these are set. If you don't have a manual goto the following web page where you can download it.

http://www.abit-usa.com/download_content3bac.html?pTITLE=KT7+%2F+KT7-RAID&#Manual

The IRQ settings for PCI slots are discussed on page 3-40.

Sorry if my original post wasn't clear. I'm not using the Abit KT-7 board now, I'm using an ECS K7S5A. I was pointing out that I had the same problem with the Abit board. The items in common between the two machines are the drives, the video card, and sound card. Like I said, I've tried a Soundblaster PCI-16 and also the on-board gameport and they all lock up the computer at installation.

Have you installed the motherboard chipset drivers?

Also have you tried removing the sound card drivers in Safe mode? (make sure that only on sound card shows up...not bot the onboard and the SB)