Hi,

 Thanks for your input on this. I did read up on the PCI steering on
Microsoft's site, but I think your description was a bit more useful:).

>If you go to Device Manager and double-click the System Devices
>branch, then the PCI Bus, and then click the IRQ Steering tab, you
>should see either "IRQ Steering Enabled" or "IRQ Steering Disabled".
>You can turn it on or off.

 I disabled IRQ steering as suggested, and even deleted the IRQ holder for
PCI steering device, but it reappeared after rebooting. Although it tells me
steering is disabled, I don't think I believe it. I haven't found anything
in the BIOS that refers to steering either, but it *must* be somewhere
because windows doesn't seem to listen when I try disabling it. I went into
the registry and deleted all keys referring to PCI steering and IRQ holders,
but they reappear after a reboot. I even tried (I was desperate) giving the
PCI steering key in the registry false information, just to see if I could
throw it off. I ended up restoring the registry from a backup that I
prudently saved:).


> I'm not 100% certain, but I think that if you go into CMOS setup and
>reserve the card's IRQ for "Legacy/ISA" rather than "PnP", that *may*
tell
>Windows that sharing this IRQ isn't an option.  That's what I would try
>first, anyway.

 I had tried this also. Once I reserved the IRQ to ISA, the network card
(and its attached IRQ holder) simply switched to a different IRQ. I also
tried to assign a specific IRQ to the slot the card was in. The card took
that IRQ fine, but so did the IRQ holder.

 Does windows 98 handle PCI steering better? Or would it still have the
same problem? What about a different PCI network card? (ie is it only
Kingston cards that seem to have this trouble?) I also have a PCI modem that
works just fine. Would removing the modem change anything? As a last resort
I suppose I could use an ISA network card but it seems a shame to do that..
especially since it looks like I just need to figure out how to disable this
PCI steering that, in typical windows fashion, tries to be a little too
helpful.

Michelle

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