"Mart" wrote
George, although I understand your concern for IRQ issues, I wonder if
they
are the cause for ALL your "slowdowns or malfunctions". I've never really
suffered IRQ issues since the days
of pratting around with non-pnp modems in 95/98 g Most of my IRQ's
(well,
9 thru' 15) share, anyway. It might just be worth looking for other
'resource' issues.

Try using WinTop, part of the old MS Kernel Toys, to determine running
processes (and cpu usage). It works fine on WinMe and can be download it
from :-
http://www.dewassoc.com/support/useful/wintop.htm


I do have some other utilities that may do that, but WILL have a look at
that link.

What I have done (and it has taken a lot of time!), is:
- Remove all cards
- Down load and install later versions of BIOS, VIA Drivers and ATA100
drivers
- Clear out all double or unneeded entries in Device manager (from Safe Mode
in WinMe)
- Disable USB in BIOS and used PS2 mouse
- Do same or similar for W2K Pro which I am able to switch to within BIOS
- Add cards back starting with Dlink wireless NIC in slot 3 (cleanest slot
and Internet speed is priority), then SB in slot 4 making sure latest
drivers are installed
(Installed for W2K and WinMe)

I then added firewire card in slot 5 and it seemed to work fine.

This gave me a clean working system with good speed. Interesting comparison
of Me vs W2K - W2K puts everything under IRQ 9, but WinMe with same BIOS
settings sticks to slot sharing as dictated by BIOS (same IRQ for everything
on slots 4&5).

I then reactivated USB in BIOS and replaced PS2 with USB mouse. Now USB, SB
and Firewire are all sharing IRQ. System is working and , as before, no
conflicts reported, but I suspect that SB and Firewire will not work 100% in
WinMe but likely better in W2K. But, I can always deactivate USB and go
back to PS2 mouse.

I had another look at my printer/scanner combination and after some messing
around found that if I set BIOS to Normal instead of ECP for parallel port,
scanner and printer would coexist (daisychain) on the on-board parallel
port. This meant I could eliminate the Lava LP2 card!

So I think I am there! But because W2K "looks" more solid, I am thinking
about using it and abandoning Me. I made a full copy of my WinMe boot drive
and then tried installing Win2K over it, so as not to have to reinstall all
my software. But, it reports it cannot do this because something is missing
(I forget exact words, but it meant Win95 upgrade or something like that).
So my next challenge, is how to install W2K over WinMe which itself results
from a series of upgrades going back to Win 3.1!!
(Win3.1-WFW-W95-W98-W98SE-WinMe). W2K Pro is not an upgrade.

I WILL look locally for a combo USB/Firewire card if I need USB 2.0 for
anything.

Thanks for all your input!