BIOS not giving IRQ to PCI Network Adapter

[Sylvander]

"Telewest" was installing "Blueyonder" Broadband Internet connection, had installed "Netgear FA330/FA331 PCI Adapter" card. The technician installed the driver etc. Upon re-boot, device manager showed:
"This device is disabled because the BIOS for the device did not give it an IRQ [code 29].
You must enable the device in the BIOS."

I re-booted, entered "BIOS setup", "PNP/PCI Configuration", enabled "Reset Configuration Data", "Save & Exit Setup", PC re-booted and the device was then working normally. IRQ 11 was allocated to it.

However:
If I re-boot again, the this happy situation is undone and the device again has an exclamation mark against it with the same warning as previous.
Going into the BIOS and repeating the fix has the same temporary effect.

I am using "Drive Overlay Software" ["Ontrack Disk Manager" supplied by Samsung]. Does this have any bearing?

[ski]

If there is an item in BIOS called 'PnP OS Installed' or similar, then make sure it's enabled. This allows the OS to assign IRQ's, instead of the BIOS.
After doing this, start up Windows, go into Device Manager, and make sure the PCI Aadapter card has no conflicts. If it does, then try to manually change its IRQ in Dev. Mgr.
If that does not work, then go into BIOS and disable the COM(serial) 1 and 2 ports(assuming there is nothing connected to them). Then see if the card gets assigned either IRQ 3 or 4.

[Rick]

I would suggest
Go into the bios and tell it to allow Reset Configuration Data
Disable one of the un needed com ports.
And Disable the PNP o/s
This allows the Bios / chipset to assign address and irq and stops windows from changing it.
Windows likes to assign everything to One IRQ
If possible check the system documentation and find what slot is assigned the same IRQ as the com port you disable and put the Nic in that slot

[Sylvander]

Hello and thanks for the suggestions.

SKI
in "PnP/PCI Configuration":
---------------------------
PnP OS Installed = yes
Resources Controlled By = Auto
Reset Configuration Data = Disabled [had been enabled]
---------------------------
As I said originally; after re-boot, there are conflicts, no conflicts, conflicts, no conflicts etc but I have since discovered that this happens whether, or not, I go into the BIOS and "enable" "Reset Configuration Data".

I tried to manually select an IRQ but a warning notice said the BIOS would not allow this.

I disabled Com1 & Com2 but this made no difference.

Rick
As I said originally, I set the BIOS to "Reset Configuration Data" and the BIOS selected
IRQ:11
Memory: E0410000-E0410fff
I/O Range: 6000-60ff
and this worked but was undone at the next boot & re-done at the boot after that.

Are you suggesting I should complete all your three steps at one re-boot?
I am reluctant to prevent the Operating System from disabling something, since it may have a VERY good reason for doing so!
Are different PCI slots assigned different IRQ's? Which documentation would have such information?
The technician tried using all three PCI slots and none of them would work.
I got it working by going into the BIOS and enabling "Reset Configuration Data". He refused to enter BIOS Setup.

I suspect that the O/S is detecting a problem during the Boot process and reverting to a Registry backup, and that the backup has the NIC card disabled. At the next boot the BIOS again assigns resources, this time the Registry says the card is disabled so the Registry is used as-is. Does this sound possible? The main clue is the repetitive cycling from enabled to disabled.
The reason I think this, is that I am using "Ad-Aware" to remove AdWare, but although I re-boot when it says the items are in use and cannot be removed, repeating the removal procedure produces the same result. I think this may be because the Registry is a previous copy and still has the offending settings within it.

[Sylvander]

Hello all

I found the following workaround for this known problem but it still did not eliminate it.
http://support.3com.com/infodeli/inotes/techtran/139ba_5ea.htm

In "Control Panel>System>Device Manager>PCI Bus Properties>IRQ Routing Status"
It reports "IRQ Steering Disabled" & "IRQ Table has some errors".

It seems I may need a BIOS upgrade but I'm not sure yet.