upgrading and repairing PCs technicians ... - 400 Bad Request

3. View the IRQ listing; items listed as “reserved” are allegedly
available, unless you see a device driver or device name listed
in the right column. Standard IRQs are also listed; however,
if the device (serial, parallel, or other port) is absent, the IRQ
listed for the device is also free.
Note
Checking for IRQ, DMA, I/O, and Memory Usage 303
MSD is unreliable for detecting IRQ usage by non-standard
peripherals, such as sound cards and network cards. If you run
MSD within an MS-DOS window under Windows 9x, you will
see memory and other information assigned to your DOS session,
rather than the full amount of memory and so on.
As an alternative that’s also more accurate, use the IRQ
detection features in Norton Diagnostics (part of the Norton
Utilities or System Works), CheckIt, QA Plus, or AMIDiag
(the latest versions are best).
4. To see the I/O Port address usage for serial and parallel ports
only, select C(om) for serial ports or L(pt) for parallel ports.
5. To see the conventional memory usage (BIOS chips and
UMBs), select M from the main menu. The display on the
left shows a visual map of usage; the display on the right
lists memory managers in use and memory created by
HIMEM.SYS, EMM386.EXE, or equivalents.
Windows 9x/2000/Me
1. Right-click My Computer.
2. Select Properties.
3. Select the Device Manager tab.
4. Double-click the Computer icon at the top of the list of
device categories.
5. Select Interrupt Request (IRQ) from the list of choices.
6. The IRQs in use (0–15) are listed along with the devices
using them; IRQs not listed are free. A yellow (!) icon indicates
devices with conflicts or other problems. A blue (I)
icon indicates a PnP (Plug and Play) device that has been set
manually.