PROBLEM SOLVED!! WINDOWS FREEZING/ DRIVER INSTALL

[backroads]

Hello everyone. This might save sombody some time and headaches.
I was having install and driver issues, system freeze and odd channel
behavior. My dell e 521 has no internal firewire port. I followed Motu's
instructions and bought a belkin firewire card with Texas Instrument chipset.
I choose pci express because i have one express slot, so I thought!
Turns out that the nvidia geforce 7300 video card in it's large dimm
socket is also pci express!! sharing the same IRQ. Went to circuit city
and purchased a nexxtech 3 port regular pci card and did a fresh install and all
drivers went in and system is finally working, at least for the moment.
This card btw has a via chipset which seems to work fine. I know IRQ
sharing should be a first check but this dell oct3 board gave no indication
that the video card was pci express. So direct IRQ with nvidia chipsets
could cause some issues. Hope this helps someone.

[wgcabp]

I followed Motu's
instructions and bought a belkin firewire card with Texas Instrument chipset.
I choose pci express because i have one express slot, so I thought!

Very cool you found a solution. I've dealt with a bunch of these newer Inspirons and the PCIex16 and PCIex1 slots are sometimes not located where you can use both at the same time....it's a pain. But just so you have all the language straight....

.....that Belkin PCIe card with the TI chipset still might come in handy. The Belkin would be a PCIex1 card, which is not populated in your system according to specs. The 7300 is a PCIex16, which still should leave the PCIex1 slot available to you.....unless the 7300 covers the PCIex1 slot. (I haven't seen that myself, having looked at a bunch of these systems, but perhaps it does depending on which OEM card Dell gave you....)

I only say this because I hope you hung on to to that Belkin TI chipset PCIe FW card, in case you have continued problems with the VIA chipset PCI FW card. Theoretically you should be able to use the Belkin card if you get in a bind again.

[backroads]

Hello, thanks for the reply. I was surprised that the via card worked
but I think maybe nvidia has some media drivers that might be
causing some of the problem. I'm not sure, it was interesting that
they would put the video card first in line on what appears to a pci express
slot. This would take away bandwidth from any downstream device.
I think dell went the cheap way on the mobo on this one.
Thanks again.