Just built a computer on the weekend:

ASUS A7M BIOS V. 1.03 board with all up to date drivers (VIA 3 in 1 and AGP miniport drivers) has 1 AGP 4X and 5 PCI slots

The OS is Win98 SE

I have - AGP RADEON 64 CARD
PCI Slot 1 - Empty
PCI Slot 2 - ATI TV Wonder
PCI Slot 3 - SoundBlaster 128
PCI Slot 4 - Netgear FA310 Ethernet Card
PCI Slot 5 - Realtek RTL8029(AS) Ethernet NIC

Two NIC's because I have Cable Internet and Local network. I am using SE's ICS to share internet between two machines.

When I look in Device Manager I see the following:

1) All IRQ's are taken
2) IRQ 9 is being shared by the following 6 devices:

Netgear NIC
Realtec NIC
VIA TECH 3038 PCI - USB UNIVERSAL HOST CONTROLLER
VIA TECH 3038 PCI - USB UNIVERSAL HOST CONTROLLER (again)
ACPI IRQ HOLDER FOR PCI IRQ STEERING
SCI IRQ used by ACPI BUS

USB ROOT HUB is also listed twice in USB CONTROLLERS section.

Sounblaster PCI 128 Legacy device is disabled in Hardware Profile because Windows said that there were no free IRQ's to assign to it. Soundblaster PCI 128 still exists in Multimedia devices and I still have sound. What use is SB PCI 128 Legacy Device anyway?

Does everything seem normal? No device conflicts (exclamation marks) are showing up. The only one was SB 128 Legacy before I disabled it. System is stable otherwise.

Does it matter what slots the PCI devices go in? Could rearranging them help?

I would remove BOTH USB host controllers and Root Hub's from device manager, then reboot.

Let Windows re-detect them, you should only have one entry for each.

Thanks,

I will do that.

When I remove both sets of devices and rebooted...Windows detected all 4 devices (both sets) again.

Weird. Whatever makes it happy I guess. Damn thing works so I'm happy.

go into bios and free up com 2,if your not using it that is

What will disabling com 2 do? will one of the other devices claim IRQ 3?

Disabled Com 2 and IRQ's are assigned better now. No logjam's on any particular interrupt.

Thanks for the help.

glad i could help
regards waggers