IRQ priorities in Windows 7

[jayzhead]

I have a severe problem with pro audio performance on my laptop. It's an HP touchscreen machine, a tx2620. Windows 7 runs perfect on it - and with the new touch features it is just exquisite to use, plus it is tons quicker and more responsive than the Vista Home Premium that came preinstalled on the machine. However, I cannot get my USB edirol UA-1ex soundcard to work with it at all. On the Vista installation it worked poorly - there were occasional clicks and pops, but it worked; on W7 it stopped working altogether (only pops occasionally audible). The problem is that the USB controller sits on a shared IRQ with a thousand other devices, and not only that - it is the LAST priority IRQ in the entire system, according to the connections manager. Now, if that happened on a desktop MB I would just shuffle the IRQ's in the bios - but HP's bios basically just allows you to change the date and time.

What do I do? How do I get windows to take the USB controller seriously, and give it priority over the built-in webcam, IR reciever and other such nonsense?.. Or, in other words, how do I assign a dedicated IRQ to a certain device?.. There was a way to do it in XP during installation (by pressing F5 and disabling ACPI auto-management), is there a similar option in 7?..

P.S.: This is not a driver issue, the same soundcard works perfectly well with my desktop - also running 7 RC.

 

[jayzhead]

Anyone?...