Can not install hardware

Windows XP
512 Ram
64meg geforce

Everytime I give the computer a piece of new hardware it instantly reboots it self the second I get to the windows sign in, or on a rare occasion that it lets me pass it simply locks up a moment after getting into windows.

I'm speciffically trying to put a new modem in it right now. And I can't make it happen. I have no other modems installed, and no un necissary drivers or missing hardware in device manager.

Anyone have any ideas? Let me know if I need to explain this clearer.

 

Can you be more specific on the 'modem'?

Details details details about the product, your system, etc.

 

Have you tried putting it into a different PCI slot (presuming its a PCI device)?

 

Sounds like an IRQ conflict.

 

My computer is:

Emachines:
*Windows XP Home Edition
*1.70GHz Intel Celeron Precessor
*dxdiag claims 382 ram but I could have sworn I upgraded to 512 a couple years back
*Intel Extreme Graphic AGP (it's just built into my mother board. I used to have a gforce but had to remove it do to boot up problems, so back to the original)
*40gig Hard Drive
*Bios Revision 0.90
*Avance AC97 Audio
I removed the CD Rom that came with it and put in a
*Creative CDRW
It has 3 open PCI slots. 1 has always been open, 1 had the PCI Gforce, and 1 had a PCI V.92 Modem.

Here's the thing, I was seperated from the computer for a long time and when I got back to it, it just didn't work. The best story I got is lightning struck real close to the house and it hadn't worked since. The monitor definently was broken, but it also had a BB Gun hole in the screen ?? :/ but the people had a brand new
*KDS Monitor
and a
*Broadxent Creative V.92 PCI Fax Modem D1361-1
waiting. But when you turned the monitor and computer on monitor it wouldn't show you anything until it got to windows sign in. One of my profiles would cause windows to crash everytime I launched any program so I deleted that one and the other profile worked great. I then completely removed the Geforce from the system and pluged the monitor back into the old AGP spot.
That fixed the monitor completely. I can see everything as colorful as always. Everything on the system seems to work fine (I havent played no games) but I've used several programs and have been burning CDs with it all night and day. The only probably which seems to remain is this modem. (but I'm guessing it would be a problem with any hardware that I tried to give to the PCI slots.) There is no physical harm that can be seen to any part of the computer, however I suppose that might not mean much.
No matter which PCI card slot I put the modem into the computer 75% of the time just barely flicks into the windows sign in screen and.. BEEP it begins to restart. The other 25% it lets me click on my name and get into windows for a moment, and it always reconigzes the modem as new hardware, regardless of the pci slot, but it quickly just freezes. Mouse doesnt move, num lock doesnt turn off, and it never recovers till I hold the power button and send it off to shut down.

So that's the actual story.

After spending 15ish hours on the comp mostly (some CD burning trying to fix the computer, I really feel that it's software based but I don't have very much knowledge or experiance fixing computers. I just USUALLY stumble my way through the problems.

And in my lacking of knowledge I'm not sure what to do about an IRQ conflict or to see if there is one. Telll me a lil more about this?

Thanks everyone, peace

 

Any ideas out there?

 

perhaps the modem has died and need a new one? is it all connected properly to ur m/b?
and you say you get to the hardware wizard and everything locks up? another driver intefering with it? i don't know you'll have to ask someone who is better than a private first class!

 

Nah it locks up soon as it gets to windows. No other drivers are interfering with it as far as I can tell. The modem should be fine. I took it out of the packageing myself.

Thanks for the reply though!

 

Man you really keep things shorter for people with short attention span like me. Anyways, you said you had a lightning strike close to your house... it is possible that the modem is kaput. Was the phone line connected to the modem when this happend? Try a new modem and see what happens. To check if you have any conflicts with other hardware:start---run---type in:msinfo32---expand hardware reseources and click on conflicts/sharing and see if your modem is listed and if its sharing any of memory addresses or irq's. Even this may not be enough since it's perfectly ok for some devices to "seemingly" use the same irqs.
Best bet is to try a new modem.