The Irq Book

The trouble with Windows 95/98 Plug and Play capabilities is that they don't always work. And the problems only get worse with Windows NT. PC users frequently find themselves in the same boat they've occupied for 15 years, struggling with hardware resource settings in hopes of getting some new peripheral to work properly. The IRQ Book explains the neglected art of diddling with interrupt requests (IRQs), Direct Memory Access (DMA) addresses, and COM ports to get your new PC gadgets connected and working properly.

You'll find basic troubleshooting doctrine explained in this book, along with some fundamental concepts of hardware interaction and lots of reference material (including tables of which devices typically use which IRQs and other resources). The most valuable information is Chase's "Troubleshooting Practicum" in which she walks the reader through the logic and process of identifying and fixing hardware problems. In this section, she covers the complete procedure for resolving conflicts with the Hardware Manager before devoting significantly more space to problems that can't be solved with that utility.

You'll also find a fine overview of the Windows 95/98 Registry and some discussion of well-known problems, like resource conflicts that center on 3-D video cards. The minimal companion CD-ROM contains a hardware diagnostics program (which won't run under Windows NT) and a Registry backup utility. --David Wall