driver only loads on the second boot

Probably your CMOS battery is dying.  Replace it with a new one.  Since this is the only PCI card, its the only device which needs to be reinstalled.  XP already has the driver, thats why it doesn't complain when you restart after a long shutdown, it just says new hardware found and uses the driver that is present.  Its similar to what happens if you move a USB device from one port to another.

In case the BIOS battery is dying if he doesnt make any setting changes to the BIOS then the IRQ shud 'stick' cause unless u change settings in case of a "Factory Defaults Loaded" message then all the IRQ's and memory settings can get changed.

This looks like the driver is not installing properly. Either that or a part of the hardware is not getting detected properly. I am assuming that u have tried all the latest drivers for ur device. One thing that happens on long poweroff times is the Power Management which you might want to switch off or its possible that the card itself is one which features a different or Legacy method of Power management which WIndows XP is not able to pick up and which kicks in after a prolonged period of inactivity or poweroff. More like a soft state kinds. I am not familiar with the card itself wheather its got a chip or something on it that cud be holding any information.

Its a high end card and cud have features that might not get installed properly. Have u tried this card on another system? Does the same problem occur or is this problem specefic to this Windows only? Since the card itself uses IRQ17 which is a PnP IRQ i wud suggest turning PnP Off or to MANUAL in the BIOS. Turn off other peripherals that are not needed like LPT ports etc or IDE channels that cud free additional IRQ's or memory locations. What happens if you turn off USB legacy support?

Is your Mobo updated to the latest BIOS version? What abt the NIC? Network cards can also pose similar power related problems. If u have a NIC in the system try disabling it or removing it and then try.

Dan

<<  i get the new hardware wizard thingy>>

This is telling you that windows is not correctly detecting your sound card -- 2 possibilities --

1. some sound cards need a real port and IRQ set when the system boots up.  This was a DOS routine for windows 98 which directly manipulated the sound card registers to set it up for winodws (yamaha, good example).

2.  now with XP, you can't use a DOS pre-run, so you MUST get the right drivers to do this for you.  And you will have to, assuming you can DL new drivers from the website, delete the old ones and install the new.

3.  There are ways to manually find the right registers and force the right DMA and IRQ settings, but too much to go into here.  IRQ 17 is not a valid IRQ for windows to use as a base setting, sorry.  That is part of the problem.

If these don't work, and you can't find drivers to set it up correctly, swap it for another sound card.  

Is PCI bus mastering enabled in the BIOS?
Are there any other devices on the PCI Bus?
Is the card in the top PCI Slot?
W

What is using IRQ 5, and 7 (Usually that is for a sound card)
Is there a jumper on the card that you can set the IRQ for it?
If so, then set it for a number lower than 13, and then tell windows to assogn that IRQ, or simply tell the BIOS that IRQ is reserved, and the bios will then on use that IRQ, also, try flashing the BIOS of the computer.

Had the same problem, you won't find a solution without a big headache.  Go spend $20.00 and get you a new soundcard.  Even though it will be cheap it will be newer and better than the troublesome one you have now!  Good Luck!

Well I doubt he wud want to do that. The soundcard is one of the best there is arnd. This seems to be an irky windows based problem or a BIOS thing to me.

At best he might have to rrinstall Windows to have this sorted out since the HAL wont change major IRQ's etc to make room for this device which it wud have to in case of a new install. This wud be a sure way of getting this problem fixed.

However on the sides we can try and get some Loose IRQ's  or memory settings changed and see if that can sort this out for him.

Dan

Yeah, best of luck with that......

hey guys thanks for the posts. Here is an update. if i hit f8 and give the pc afew second of idle time then start widows normally the dam thing works. or if i go into the bios then exit without saving changes this also works.it seem the pc has to "warm up" a few second for the driver to load. i think windows is booting too fast. is there a way to create a delay when booting that would accomplish this "warm up"?

You could go into the BIOS and disable:
Quick Boot and Plug-N-Play OS.

Then set the Floppydrive and cdrom as 1st and 2nd Boot Devices.

That may give the system long enough to warm up.

Put in a BIOS password check. That makes the system halt at the BIOS screen and you cantake ur time till u feel its initalised. Another thing u can do is to have a pre-init delay set from the BIOS. normally all good boards give you this option in the BIOS. You can set this to 5,10,15,30 seconds depending on how much you want it to be.

I personally find a system BIOS password better. Disabling PnP wont be a good idea IMO as it cud cause other problems which wud be unneccesary for your setup.

Dan

>> BIOS password check <<  I KNEW I was forgetting something. Good idea.    : )

Glad i cud contribute :-)
Its usually the best way to put a non intrusive delay in the process. My SCSI also gives the same problem and ever since i did this its worked like a charm.

Dan

The delay is not a matter of bios, its a matter of legacy driver boot up....the driver is taking to long so XP is skipping it, there is a MS article that talks about this, I will look it up and post.  To accomplish the delay you are talking about you may want to try putting a wait in the Autoexec.bat script on bootup.

bios password check isthat a password b4 boot or to get into the password.