I was looking at my IRQ settings today and noticed that more than a few devices were sharing the same IRQ. My system runs smoothly and I never have to reboot, so I’m not asking for device conflict advice.
As I understand it, a common IRQ configuration uses IRQ’s 9, 10, and 11, for PCI, ISA and AGP devices. Yet, my configuration shows that IRQs 10 and 11 are unused, while #9 is shared by my video card, USB host controller, something referred to as “Microsoft ACPI-Compliant System”, my ethernet card, and my 56k modem (unused).
I’m running Windows 2000, and have an Asus P3V4X motherboard.
Why would my computer want to bunch everything up into one IRQ? Thanks for any replies.
There are only so many interrupts allocated for PCI slots. Many motherboards are set up so as to force the higher numbered PCI slots to use the same interrupt. IOW, it may be due to how your slots are stuffed.
I have an Asus setup too, an older mainboard with a dual-pro-200 CPU card, and I am also running Windows 2000. When I had cards in both the PCI slots farthest down the board, they were sharing IRQ 9 (and I think that caused some problems). When I rearranged so that the second-to-last PCI slot was empty, no IRQ sharing.
I have some extra time, so I looked it up … your motherboard is documented at P34VX Overview, and the manual is available here. I don’t see why they’re all bunching up on IRQ 9. Perhaps reading that manual, especially pages 29-31, may help.