I've got a REAL wierd one here. AS the subject header says, my main PC won't recognize my devices any more. First I'll give the tech specs, then go into the specifics.

Home built PC. ASUS K7V-T MB w/AMD 700mhz Athalon CPU, 384 MB of PC-133 SDRAM, G-Force II 200 MX 32mb Video Card, Sigma Designs DVD Decoder Card, SBLive Value Sound Card, and a PCI 56k Modem Blaster. I've got a Toshiba DVD-ROM, an HP CD-RW, a Maxtor 20GB HDD, and a 4GB HDD that I use for backup. Oh yeah, Win98 for my OS too http://discussanything.com/Ubb/smile.gif That's all the stuff that should be relevant...

OK, here's what it's doing: I started out a couple of weeks ago having problems with a secondary USB "card" not recognizing. That card was connected to the Mainboard by a 9 pin cable. I chased my tail on that for about a week, and decided that since everything else seemed to check out OK, that the card must have been the problem. Everything else chhecked good three times over, and the USB items I had worked fine on the primary USB ports on the MB.

So, I condemned the card and set up my system fresh w/o it. Everything worked fine for about a week, then my sound card wasn't being recognized. It disappeared completely off the Win98 Device Manager item list and wouldn't detect w/the Add New Hardware wizard in the control panel. THe next thing I know, the same thing happened to my modem and my DVD Decoder card.

So far, I've downloaded the BIOS files again, and re-flashed the BIOS, checked everything on the mainboard for "chip walk", and re-installed Win98 AGAIN after re-formatting the Main HDD. Norton's Anti-virus gave the PC a clean bill of health also, (at several point in the last week). The only thing I've found is that the DVD card and the sound card (but not the modem) don't have a 100% solid fit in their PCI slots. More like 90%. It feels like the mainboard is bowed downward or something. I'm in the process of dismantling it all now and seeing what I can find there...

BTW, I haven't checked the other cards yet, but the modem works fine in the backup PC, so it's not bad itself.

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Courage is not the absence of fear, but the conquest of it

"There is no weapon deadlier than the will" Bruce Lee

http://www.boortz.com/gadsden.gif

IRQ conflict?

Sounds like your hard drive is failing. I've run across the exact same thing before on a couple of occasions.

If you have Norton's disk doctor, I would suggest running it. Do a thorough surface scan. It's going to take a couple of hours at least, so be patient. This will identify and tag any new bad sectors that have developed.

You could also run the Maxtor HD utilities as well. If you didn't get them with your HD, you can DL them from Maxtor directly.



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Artist formerly known as Reindeer

hmm, why ya think it is a HD failure Gary?

To me it seems more an issue with the mobo. Have you made sure it isn't shorting somewhere? Does it have all of the standoffs?

Do programs/OS install fine on the drive? Does the Bios ever not detect the HD?

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Manu Narayan

Originally posted by Turbostang:
Sounds like your hard drive is failing.

I won't outright discount this, as it can happen. As sectors become too damaged to store useful info, the registry and/or driver settings can become corrupt or outright lost. This USUALLY will cause errors on boot up though.

Look at the power supply and mobo voltage regulator also. Many times these items will cause a cascading problem like this. If this is your problem and it doesn't fry your components, consider yourself lucky. I'd take the case/p.s. to a local P.C. shop and ask them to test it.

Last time I saw this was on an ASUS Socket 7 board. Computer would boot and operate, but, would start losing devices after a few minutes. Reboot and sometimes they would come back, sometimes they wouldn't. Turned out the P.S. was bad. Guy tried to put in a new mobo and fried it at power-up. Amazingly enough, the old mobo would still power up...


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Formerly known as 74Mav
(Mav dropped the no. 2 connecting rod and I'm pissed)

Have ya tried with a 'barebones' system.

I.e graphics card, HD, and thats it?

I assume it detects your grpahics card right? is that AGP? Or is that PCI also? Does it detect a card if only one is in there?

Any 'whine' coming from any components?

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Manu Narayan

UPDATE!!! I HATE PCs (sometimes http://discussanything.com/Ubb/smile.gif )!

Here's what I've found after 24 hrs of steady parts swapping experiments between my main PC and the back-up:

THe secondary HDD was indeed totally shot. I shouldn't have been surprised here, as it was a second hand old 4 Gig western digital job. I don't think it's last owner treated it nice - LOL!

That took care of some stability probs, but the PCI cards still aren't recognizing. Other than that, the PC seems to work like a dream. THe cards themselves check out fine when used on the other PC. I guess they're OK then http://discussanything.com/Ubb/smile.gif No unusual noises fron the machine either, at least that I've noticed... Given that I've tried everything else, I guess I'll try to switch out the power supplies. If that doesn't fix it, I guess SOMETHING on the motherboard got screwed up somehow.

I'll let everyone know what I find out IF I can get back online - LMAO! Thanks for all the help http://discussanything.com/Ubb/biggrin.gif

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Courage is not the absence of fear, but the conquest of it

"There is no weapon deadlier than the will" Bruce Lee

http://www.boortz.com/gadsden.gif

FINAL UPDATE: I Won http://discussanything.com/Ubb/biggrin.gif

Here's the deal; it turned out to be my new Video Card of all things! It's a G-Force II 200 MX card from a company called Jaton. It apparently was SOMEHOW interfering with the resources for the other cards. Wierd since it was an AGP card. I should have known something was wrong with it though when the Invidia Detonator drivers didn't work right with it... That was the last thing I suspected though, since it otherwise seemed to be the only thing on the PC that DID work right. With my old Diamond Viper 770 though, the PC works better than ever.

Live and learn. Time consuming lesson though.

I'm going to go exchange the card ASAP. If anybody's heard anything good or bad about Jaton products, let me know. I want to know if what I got was a fluke or if I should exchange it for a differnet brand of card.

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Courage is not the absence of fear, but the conquest of it

"There is no weapon deadlier than the will" Bruce Lee

http://www.boortz.com/gadsden.gif

[This message has been edited by Shadowhawk (edited 10-18-2001).]

I havne't even heard of Jaton. :-)

That is strange though, would have been the last thing I suspected also. Good to know for the future!

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Manu Narayan

You haven't heard of Jaton? You don't know very much about computers then. They're a low end producer, like how Trident and companies of the like have been in recent times.

Jaton is pretty suck. Indeed, MX200s in general pretty much suck... 1/4 the memory bandwidth of the regular Geforce2. I'd recommend that if you do get a Nvidia card, you buy it from a good company like Guillemot/Hercules, Visiontek, LeadTek, or the newer cards from Gainward (gainward used to be pretty sketchy, but their Geforce3 is the best you can get).