two questions

[alternate]

1. is it possible that cable-television signals through the tv tuner on pcie x1 slot can affect BIOS and cpu during initialization (after post, before boot)? I'm wondering what could have caused the event below.
(Event: immediately after post beep, monitor displays CPU and speed, but freezes before memory information is displayed; in fact displayed will be after the speed 2.67 GHz a comma followed by "(2 CPUS);" by the event, the comma and "(2 CPUs)" do not display; freeze occurs before we get to the comma, thus. This event occurred until I removed the cable-tv cable from the coaxial connector (F-connector) of tv-tuner; after removal, things continued; whew.)

2. Since the sound card was installed, thus using the only PCI slot, thus using all the slots on my motherboard (except for one pciex1 hidden by 8800gtx), trying to install XP-pro has gone significantly slower in the beginning phase of installation. The whole process used to take 15 minutes, but it takes now 20 minutes just to get to the 'copying files' stage; this and the remainder proceed quickly as usual. Should I suspect that the chipset is overloaded? Can someone describe how the NB is related to the functions in initial XP installation?
(I thought, given that the tv tuner (which gets hot but not as hot as graphics card) being right under the NB heatsink might be causing heating problem for the NB; but it was fine with the tv tuner there before the sound card was installed.)

It has just occurred to me that these two things might be related--the post-POST freeze and slow XP-setup initialization. Anybody also suspect?

Asus P5NT WS
Avermedia Combo TV tuner
Sondigo inferno
Xeon 3070
Kingston HyperX

[Sylvander]

No clue why this is happening, but....

Go HERE (http://www.pcguide.com/ref/mbsys/bios/boot_Startup.htm) and click "System Configuration Summary" at left.

Does this describe the part of Startup where the problem occurs?

[alternate]

Yes. It will normally display, "Intel Xeon 3070 2.66 GHz, (2 cores)," or something like that, but it instead displayed for that "Intel Xeon 3070 2.66 GHz"

The rest of the screen is blank, except for Press delete or Press F8 for setup or boot menu...

That event happened over and over until I decided to being pulling things out of the back of motherboard, beginning with the coaxial tv cable; luckily, it worked immediately after the first thing unplugged, i.e. the tv cable.

[jlreich]

I have a TV tuner card hooked up all the time on my system and my kids system and have no problems.

But, perhaps because it is in the PCIe x1 slot the BIOS is getting confused as to whether or not it is a video card and tries initiate it as such. Perhaps...

This shouldn't happen. But who knows. Have you looked at the mobo manufacturers KB to see if there is a known issue, or at BIOS updates to see if this or something similar is listed as a fix?

[Sylvander]

I wonder whether it could have something to do with PnP resource allocation and/or recording these in the ESCD?

See Plug and Play Operation and Extended System Configuration Data [ESCD] (http://www.pcguide.com/ref/mbsys/res/pnp_Operation.htm).

[alternate]

BIOS initialization has occurred normally with the tv cable back in since I-replugged-it-and-since-things-been-normal-again.

I didn't find much of a menu BIOS about that. I did notice that the primary graphics slot was set as PCI instead of PCIe (sound card has been in PCI since recently, but I don't think this would affect windows installation speed). So I switched it to PCIe; also I set 'PnP OS' to enable (so that, according to description in BIOS, the OS takes care of nonboot devices instead of BIOS itself).

[mjc]

If the primary graphics was set to PCI instead of PCIe that may have been your problem...because a capture card, depending on the BIOS may be seen as a second graphics card...or in this case the first card and Windows setup was trying to initialize the wrong card...

[Sylvander]

SOME THOUGHTS:
1. PCI devices are treated as a special group.

2. They are all almost certainly all PnP.

3. See PnP/PCI Configuration (http://www.pcmech.com/article/pnppci-configuration).

[alternate]

Reading that, I'm no longer sure if I should enable PnP OS. Should I disable it again?

Booting was fine even with the primary graphics set to PCI in BIOS and with installed PCI sound card. From past experience, I think that menu option works only if there is a graphics card in the PCI slot; way back when I tested the PCI slot with a PCI graphics card, I was able to switch between primary graphics. Anyway, that earlier problem I had was resolved with unplugging the tv cable.

[Sylvander]

"Should I disable it again?"
Yes.
That way the BIOS will do the business, and if Windows disagrees with any choices it will correct them.