Just bought a new M-audio Audiophile 2496 sound card to record from my turntable and pre-amp.
My PC locks up solid after about 15 seconds of recording using the 2496. The screen and cursor freeze and the computer is not responsive to any inputs. Needs a hard reset to get it going again.

Nothing else causes the screen to freeze. It is fine until I try to start recording. The problem occurs with several pieces of recording software that work fine with the on-board sound chip.

Home made PC system:
- Abit NF7 v2.0 mobo, latest BIOS and drivers
- AMD 2400+ processor at 2000Mhz
- 2GB memory
- Onboard sound card active
- GeForce 6600GT graphics card
- 1x IDE and 1x SATA hard drives
- 2x ATAPI DVD R/W drives
- Add-in PCI SATA/Firewire card
- Add-in PCI USB 2.0 card (for extra ports)
- Add-in PCI modem
- 500w PSU

Windows XP Pro SP2 with fully up to date (Except for SP3).
Latest drivers for everything including the 2496 and graphics card.

I heard the card should have its own IRQ sub 15. I can get the card onto its own IRQ but nothing seems to shift it from IRQ 17 whichever slot it is plugged into.

So far I have tried the following:

- Disabling the on-board sound card
- Removing all add in PCI cards except the 2496 and AGP graphics card and trying the 2496 card in all the vacant slots
- Uninstalling and reinstalling drivers
- Disabling COM and LPT ports

About the only thing I can think of that I have not tried is to redo the HAL using the partial "reinstall" of XP. The thought of going through all the driver updates that that involves fills me with dread.

Does anyone have any idea what else I could try or does it sound like a dodgy card with "RMA" written all over it?

Matt.

Personally if you have done all that (and checked the Windows error logs) I would ask for a replacement. You have tried mostly all the things that I would have to solve a problem like this.

One thing that might be worth a try is booting from a live CD such as Ubuntu's installer disc. You can install audacity whilst running from RAM and try to record in 24/96. This way at least you can completely rule out software issues causing the lockup.

Edit: Or of course try it in a different PC

The only other suggestion I have is to use the Delta_WDM_5.10.00.5057v.3 drivers. The more recent ones seem to have functionality removed and these older ones have never given me any issues at all. I'm not sure if the older ones are still listed, but if not I can make them available.

Thanks for all the suggestions.

In the end I got the 2496 to work. A further chat with M-audio tech-support showed up that I was not rebooting enough when moving PCI cards. What I was doing was shutting down, moving the 2496 to another slot then rebooting. Apparently the IRQ will not change when it is done this way.

What I needed to do was shut down, take out the 2496 completely, reboot and shut down, put the 2496 back in another slot and reboot.

After about another hour of PCI card shuffling I narrowed the problem down to a conflict with an add-in USB 2.0 card. Every time I put it back it would pick up the same IRQ as the 2496 and cause the lock-up problem, so I have left it out. I now have no spare USB ports, but I have a hub if I find I need another one.

It now shares IRQ 18 with my PCI analogue modem (which I use to send and receive faxes), but that does not seem to bother it.