Is installing two graphics cards, one in AGP and one in PCI causing this problem? Is it a problem with the PCI slot I am using?

FXing Serious wrote on 2021-04-30, 18:30:

Is installing two graphics cards, one in AGP and one in PCI causing this problem? Is it a problem with the PCI slot I am using?

Could very well be resource problems.
Its common for the AGP port to share IRQ with PCI slot 1.

bofh.fromhell wrote on 2021-04-30, 20:29:

FXing Serious wrote on 2021-04-30, 18:30:

Is installing two graphics cards, one in AGP and one in PCI causing this problem? Is it a problem with the PCI slot I am using?

Could very well be resource problems.
Its common for the AGP port to share IRQ with PCI slot 1.

So the solution would be to switch the wireless card over to the 1st slot (top) and the Matrox card to the second slot?

When I go to the resource tab to check on the IRQ given to the ATI card (AGP), I dont see the entry for Interrupt Request. The Matrox card sometimes are given 11 and sometimes 3. The 3 is given also to my wireless PCI card and the COM ports. Please excuse my ignorance in this topic. I never knew about IRQs until now.

In the Chaintech 5RSA2 motherboard I can see that IRQs 5,9,10,11 are free to use. 5 is already occupied by the onboard ESS Solo1 sound card that I know for sure. Is there a quick way to see IRQ conflicts or a list of what IRQs are assigned to what device instead of going one by one in the device manager?

FXing Serious wrote on 2021-05-01, 00:57:

In the Chaintech 5RSA2 motherboard I can see that IRQs 5,9,10,11 are free to use. 5 is already occupied by the onboard ESS Solo1 sound card that I know for sure. Is there a quick way to see IRQ conflicts or a list of what IRQs are assigned to what device instead of going one by one in the device manager?

Not entirely sure how the PnP magic works.
But IIRC the devices should be able to share an IRQ.
Then again some graphics cards are "special" and don't like to share.
And the IRQ's are somehow bound to different slots on the motherboards.
Or rather some slots share IRQ lanes with others, and some might not get an IRQ at all.
This means that while you can set the IRQ for a slot in the BIOS, whatever other slot that's bound to it will also change IRQ.
And this also means that hardware which doesn't like to share resources will have to be kept in certain slots.

Some motherboards have a table of the sharing in the manual, but I couldn't find it for your 5RSA2.
For instance the ASUS P3B-F looks like this:

Programs like PCI-list can be helpful when you are chasing resources:
https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/pci_list.html

Not saying this is guaranteed to be your problem.
I mean it could just be flakey hardware =)

bofh.fromhell wrote on 2021-05-01, 03:09:

Not entirely sure how the PnP magic works. But IIRC the devices should be able to share an IRQ. Then again some graphics cards a […]
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FXing Serious wrote on 2021-05-01, 00:57:

In the Chaintech 5RSA2 motherboard I can see that IRQs 5,9,10,11 are free to use. 5 is already occupied by the onboard ESS Solo1 sound card that I know for sure. Is there a quick way to see IRQ conflicts or a list of what IRQs are assigned to what device instead of going one by one in the device manager?

Not entirely sure how the PnP magic works.
But IIRC the devices should be able to share an IRQ.
Then again some graphics cards are "special" and don't like to share.
And the IRQ's are somehow bound to different slots on the motherboards.
Or rather some slots share IRQ lanes with others, and some might not get an IRQ at all.
This means that while you can set the IRQ for a slot in the BIOS, whatever other slot that's bound to it will also change IRQ.
And this also means that hardware which doesn't like to share resources will have to be kept in certain slots.

Some motherboards have a table of the sharing in the manual, but I couldn't find it for your 5RSA2.
For instance the ASUS P3B-F looks like this:

Programs like PCI-list can be helpful when you are chasing resources:
https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/pci_list.html

Not saying this is guaranteed to be your problem.
I mean it could just be flakey hardware =)

I move the wireless card to the top pci slot and the matrox to the last slot. No difference.. still does it.

Playing around with the bios I can get different results. Sometimes it will crash login into windows... Sometimes you can see the wallpaper and the user login box completely without issues but once you login all hell breaks lose again.

Going to safe mode I can see the mode, the wireless card, the COMs and the Matrox being assigned to the same IRQ. I don't see an IRQ vale on AGP but other values are almost identical to Matrox.

Disablingthe hardware in question doesnt make anything better. Is this a problem with Windows 98? The matrox card works fine on Win2k.

Maybe it has bad ram, and installing the drivers allows it to start using the additional ram that is bad.